Fake Coinbase staffer ‘stole $16m in crypto’ and blew loot in online casinos – prosecutors

A New York man posed as a Coinbase employee to steal about $16 million in crypto from some 100 traders – before proceeding to lose millions of dollars’ worth of coins in online casinos.

That’s according to the Office of the Brooklyn District Attorney, which said it has charged the 23-year-old New York resident Ronald Spektor with 31 offences, including first-degree grand larceny, first-degree money laundering, and scheme to defraud.

“He allegedly tricked many unsuspecting people to transfer their life savings to wallets he controlled, blew their hard-earned money gambling online, and then bragged about his successful thefts,” said Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez. “We will investigate offenders using the latest technology, freeze their assets whenever possible, and assist the victims.”

However, it appears that gambling-addicted criminals are becoming more reckless and gung-ho in their tactics, with a rise in similar attacks also taking place in other parts of the world.

Gamblers target crypto traders

The District Attorney said its Virtual Currency Unit had been investigating the case for around a year.

The unit says all of the affected users are US-based, and said that it had spoken to over 70 alleged victims.

The New York Post reported that, at a hearing on Friday, prosecutors told a court that Spektor had been trying to evade arrest by “criss-crossing the US in Greyhound buses,” while he plotted an “escape” to Georgia.

A prosecution official told the court Spektor “took concrete steps to execute” his flight by sending “$600,000 of crypto to an individual in Georgia.”

The court is set to reconvene on January 6, where it will hear evidence that Spektor posed as a “Coinbase representative” who told crypto traders a hacker had accessed their accounts.

Prosecutors said Spektor told the Coinbase users they should move their coins to a new wallet to safeguard their funds.

“The users [believed] they were communicating with a real Coinbase representative,” the District Attorney’s office said. “They unwittingly moved their cryptoassets to a wallet that they were led to believe was under their sole control, but was actually accessible by the defendant.”

After moving the crypto through various wallets and exchanges, Spektor allegedly sent “large portions of the stolen assets” to “gambling services and various online storefronts.”

The office said that Spektor’s father is also an “active suspect” in the investigation due to his “unexplained wealth.”

Echoes of Russian crypto hack

Earlier this month, police in the Russian city of Krasnodar took to Telegram to explain they had arrested a hacker who stole crypto worth over $20,000 from unsuspecting crypto traders by taking over their email accounts.

Working with an accomplice he’d met online, police said, the hacker used data found in the accounts to discover passwords and seed phrases so they could empty the traders’ wallets.

In a similar moment of abandon, the alleged hacker then proceeded to spend the entirety of his share of the crypto at an online casino.

Police in Krasnodar said the suspect could be jailed for up to 10 years if he is convicted.

And another recent suspected hack saw an unlucky crypto user mistakenly send almost $50 million worth of USDT to a hacker’s address in a reported poisoning attack.

Tim Alper is a news correspondent at DL News. Got a tip? Email at tdalper@dlnews.com.