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Crypto Owner Loses 0,000 to ‘Coinbase Support’ Scammer Discovered Through Google Ad
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Crypto Owner Loses $100,000 to ‘Coinbase Support’ Scammer Discovered Through Google Ad

After experiencing issues trading his cryptocurrency holdings on Coinbase, a man in his 60s decided to contact Coinbase support for assistance. He searched for “Coinbase” on Google and clicked on a promoted result that displayed a Coinbase support phone number. After calling the number, the man was convinced to share his Coinbase password and open his online bank account with the person on the other end, who was in fact a scammer posing as Coinbase customer service. By the time the man realized what was happening, he had lost $100,000 worth of bitcoin, ether, and US dollars, thanks to a fraud alert from his bank.

Scammers posing as crypto support representatives are all over social media and elsewhere. Now, it appears they’re buying Google ads to appear at the top of Google search results. While Google says it’s trying to weed out fraudulent advertisers, a few are still slipping through the cracks.

While phishing attacks like this are common in both crypto and tradfi, crypto platforms often lack the same safeguards as major banking platforms to thwart unauthorized transactions, nor do they have the same ability to rollback transactions.