UPDATE [May 21, 2025]: According to Coinbase, Ed Suman was not among those affected by the recent breach of Coinbase's customer support system in India. Additionally, a spokesperson for Coinbase says Suman has not conducted transactions on Coinbase since 2022, predating the breach discussed in this article.
An art fabricator who helped Jeff Koons create Balloon Dog and other large sculptures lost his life savings in a sophisticated con job. Ed Suman, 67, had over $2 million in Bitcoin and Ether stored on a hardware wallet, but was tricked into disclosing his private keys to scammers posing as customer-support staffers at Coinbase, a large cryptocurrency exchange platform.
The hackers gained access through Coinbase's own customer support system in India, where agents were bribed to hand over sensitive customer information. As reported in Bloomberg, the criminals used this data to launch targeted "social engineering" attacks. In Suman's case, they posed as Coinbase security staff and knew specific details about his accounts that made them seem legitimate.
"Coinbase should have been proactively implementing scam awareness measures months ago," Suman said. "They could have prevented a huge amount of theft. In my opinion, they've been woefully remiss and, in my case, the consequences of that have been significant."
From Bitcoin News:
According to Coinbase's filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the breach may have started as early as January and affected nearly 1% of the company's active monthly users — tens of thousands of people.
Hackers demanded $20M from Coinbase to keep the breach quiet but the company refused to pay. Coinbase says it fired the compromised agents and is setting aside $180M to $400M to reimburse affected users.
But so far, Suman hasn't been told if he'll be reimbursed.
Previously: Chinese printer driver infected with Bitcoin-stealing malware cost users $950k
