Retired artist loses over $2M of cryptocurrency to scam involving someone posing as Coinbase support

After retiring, he turned to cryptocurrency investing, eventually accumulating 17.5 Bitcoin (BTC) and 225 Ether (ETH) — a portfolio that comprised most of his retirement savings.

A retired artist who previously helped build Jeff Koons sculptures has lost more than $2 million in cryptocurrency after falling victim to a scam earlier this year.

Ed Suman, 67, also fabricated works by other prominent art-world figures during a career that spanned nearly two decades. After retiring, he turned to cryptocurrency investing.

Suman’s interest in the crypto space began after his brother introduced him to Bitcoin (BTC) in 2014. He gradually began buying crypto, eventually accumulating 17.5 BTC and 225 Ether (ETH).

The majority of Suman’s retirement savings were tied up in his crypto portfolio, which he stored in a Trezor Model One hardware wallet.

March brought a text message that appeared to be from Coinbase, warning Suman of unauthorized account access. He responded, and soon after received a phone call from a man claiming to be a Coinbase security staffer named Brett Miller.

The caller appeared knowledgeable, correctly stating that Suman’s funds were stored in a hardware wallet and that his family members’ names were on his Coinbase account.

But he added that hardware wallets could still be vulnerable and induced Suman to cooperate with a “security procedure.” This involved entering his seed phrase into a website mimicking Coinbase’s interface.

Over the course of nine days in March, Suman received a total of three calls from numbers that appeared to belong to Coinbase.

During the third and final call, a second caller, who also claimed to be a Coinbase security staffer, again convinced Suman to enter his seed phrase into the fake Coinbase interface.

By the end of that call, all of Suman’s crypto holdings were gone.

Coinbase suffers major data breach

The scam follows a data breach at Coinbase that was disclosed this week.

The breach involved customer support staff in India being bribed by attackers to access sensitive user information, including names, account balances and transaction histories.

Coinbase confirmed that the breach impacted roughly 1% of its monthly transacting users.

Among those affected was venture capitalist Roelof Botha, managing partner at Sequoia Capital. There is no indication that any of Botha’s funds were accessed, and he declined to comment.

Coinbase’s chief security officer, Philip Martin, reportedly said the contracted customer service agents at the center of the controversy were based in India and had been fired following the breach.

The exchange has also said it plans to pay between $180 million and $400 million in remediation and reimbursement to affected users.