“We target CEOs, CFOs, and software engineers,” a coinbase scammer told Casa CEO Nick Neuman, adding, “We don’t call poor people.”
By posing as Coinbase assistants and utilizing hacked data to target senior crypto executives and software developers, cryptocurrency phishing scammers are reportedly making five figures every week.
When a “Coinbase support” scammer called Nick Neuman, CEO and co-founder of Casa, a company that provides Bitcoin self-custody solutions, he “decided to turn the tables on him and ask him about being a coinbase scammer” and learned more than he had anticipated.
We earn at least five figures every week. When questioned about how much money they gained, the coinbase scammer said, “We hit $35K two days ago; we do it for a reason, there is money to be made in it.”
The coinbase scammer planned the attack by claiming that a password change request had been canceled and that a notification had been delivered, according to a video that Neuman shared on X on November 20.
Because the “notification” included a harmful link, Neuman asked the con artist what kinds of people were duped.
He began by saying, “You’d be surprised, it’s people like you, you’re a CEO at Casa […] we’re hitting CEOs, CFOs, and software engineers.”
“We don’t call poor people, the data we have is from a database where the minimum you have to have is $50,000,”
The con artist went on to say that “money or education isn’t a determining factor,” asserting that they obtain information on their high roller targets from Unchained Capital, a Bitcoin financial services provider.
“We have the Unchained database and we assume that if you’re into crypto you’ll have a Coinbase account, so that’s how we run it.”
According to the coinbase scammer, they can fake emails to make them look as though they came from Coinbase and utilize an “auto-doxxer” to obtain further information about their targets before making phishing calls.
According to the coinbase scammer, the ultimate objective is to have the victim transfer money to a wallet under their control rather than to obtain their password.
Since they are not based in the US, they have laundered stolen cryptocurrency using Tornado Cash, which they occasionally swap for the privacy coin Monero.
“After you hold it in XMR for a couple of days, that bitch is gone, you’re not seeing the funds again.”
In response to a question regarding switching to fiat, he stated that they use hardware wallets and no KYC exchanges, mentioning Ledger, which has been the target of phishing assaults since its database was compromised in 2020, before cashing out through middlemen.
The scammer said that cryptocurrency was like the “Wild Wild West” and that it was simple to access company databases.
“Who will you call if you lose $30–$40,000 in Bitcoin or Ethereum? They said, “The crypto police?” and said that they are currently attempting to make $100,000 a month from their scam.
According to Web3 security firm Scam Sniffer, crypto phishing attempts took over $127 million in the third quarter.
