Coinbase users lose over $45M to social engineering scams

According to on-chain investigator ZachXBT, Coinbase users suffered over $45M in losses linked to social engineering. The independent analyst shared a series of addresses linked to the alleged scammers.

A Closer Look At The Exploiter Addresses

Notably, ZachXBT noted $45M in outflows from Coinbase users in the past week alone. The destination addresses were identified as belonging to social engineering scammers.

"There was another round of social engineering scams out of Coinbase last week for over $45M in a single week, and ten BTC and ETH addresses were spotted by on-chain researchers as receiving relatively large lump sums and moving them to new anonymous wallets.

On the Ethereum addresses, the exploiters received ETH and DAI funds, immediately emptying the destination wallet. In similar scams, the attackers used anonymous DEX and DeFi services, as well as coin mixers.

Previous investigations link the scams to spoof verification messages. Targets were called personally by Coinbase Support impersonators. Then, they use a spoofed site and copied email templates to convince users to send all funds to a new address. This also explains the transaction pattern, which emptied entire accounts in one large transfer.

Coinbase Users Are Hit By Personal Scams

"This brings the total to nine figures in outflows linked to scams targeting Coinbase customers over several months. Most of the outflows were not flagged, as they were signed and sent by users in bulk, even without a test transaction.

Data from previous months showed that scammers have been busy with Coinbase customers. In March, the on-chain investigator noted $46M in outflows, and as much as $65M in December 2024 and January 2025, from December 2024 and January 2025.

None of the destination addresses were flagged by Coinbase security tools.

In total, ZachXBT estimates the size of scams at $300M on a yearly basis. Other exchanges have not shown similar sized withdrawals. One of the reasons pointed out by the investigator is that Coinbase panels are sold through Telegram, allowing multiple scammers to impersonate the exchange. No such panels and toolsets are available for other markets.

"I'm sharing this info in hopes that it reaches the victims and maybe we can recover some of the lost funds. Some of the addresses were sent to me by people who fell victim to these scams and are trying to report them. I've also seen reports from Coinbase users in a few crypto community groups. It seems like some users are reporting the scams to the authorities, which is a positive step.

While scammers can create new wallets almost constantly, it's surprising that the old wallets are still not being blacklisted by Coinbase. Perhaps this is something that could be done to mitigate the impact of these scams in the future," concluded ZachXBT.

The outflows follow a period where Coinbase was extremely strict with suspicious activity from user accounts, often leading to freezes based on minor suspicions. However, there are no mitigation tools for sending funds to possible scammers. ZachXBản thân người ta xét nét về nhau, rồi bất mãn với nhau, rồi minhh ngũ lẫn nhau, đều là xét nét, bất mãn và minh ngũ lẫn nhau mà thôi. Đến nỗi người ta đánh mất đi mối quan hệ tốt đẹp, đánh mất đi sự tôn trọng lẫn nhau, đánh mất đi lòng tin vào nhau.

Phải chăng, cuộc sống này vốn dĩ không hoàn hảo, con người cũng vậy, ai cũng có khuy điểm riêng. Thay vì xét nét, bất mãn và minh ngũ lẫn nhau, tại sao chúng ta không học cách包容、体谅 và tin tưởng lẫn nhau hơn?

Hãy cố gắng nhìn vào mặt tốt của người khác, cùng nhau giúp đỡ và tiến bộ. Cuộc sống sẽ tươi đẹp hơn khi xung quanh đều là những người tốt đẹp và đáng quý.

Và nếu không muốn bị đánh mất mối quan hệ, hãy dừng ngay xét nét, bất mãn và minh ngũ lẫn nhau. Bởi lẽ, mất đi rồi mới biết quý trọng, nhưng đến lúc đó, có thể đã muộn mất rồi.