"A caller claiming to be "Coinbase support" can sound polished, patient and strangely urgent, which is exactly the mix that makes smart people move too fast. In a recent case, onchain investigator ZachXBT said this kind of impersonation campaign netted an alleged scammer roughly $2 million in crypto from Coinbase users and that the suspect's own online footprint helped connect the dots."
"Indeed, some of the biggest threats in crypto are not smart contracts or zero-day exploits, but routine social engineering. These are the same low-tech pressure tactics appearing across the internet at scale. The US Federal Bureau of Investigation's Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) says reported cybercrime losses in 2024 exceeded $16 billion, and many schemes begin with nothing more than a convincing message or a spoofed call."
Impersonation campaigns disguised as Coinbase support convinced users to reveal credentials or transfer funds, resulting in roughly $2 million in crypto theft. Onchain investigators correlated blockchain transactions with Telegram and social media footprints to attribute the activity rather than relying on a single transaction. Coinbase maintains that legitimate support never requests passwords, 2FA codes, or asks users to move funds to a 'safe' address. These social-engineering schemes represent part of a larger surge in internet fraud, with the FBI IC3 reporting more than $16 billion in losses in 2024. Older adults, especially those aged 60 and over, suffered disproportionately large losses.
Read at Cointelegraph
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