Man sentenced to 12 years for $16M Coinbase customer support scam

A Brooklyn man was sentenced to as much as 12 years in prison for stealing nearly $16 million from Coinbase users.

On Sept. 23, Ronald Spektor, 23, received a four-to-12-year sentence after pleading guilty to a 31-count indictment stemming from a fake customer-support operation that targeted about 100 people across the US, according to the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office.

Prosecutors said Spektor posed as a Coinbase representative and warned users that hackers were threatening their accounts. Victims were then instructed to move their crypto to wallets presented as secure but secretly accessible to Spektor.

The scheme generated about $15.944 million in losses, with some victims losing more than $1 million. Spektor pleaded guilty Sept. 2 to charges including first-degree money laundering, grand larceny, and criminal possession of stolen property.

The scam relied on victims executing the transfers themselves after being convinced their assets were in immediate danger.

In one case detailed by prosecutors, a Pennsylvania man received spoofed two-factor authentication messages before a caller identifying himself as “Fred Wilson” from Coinbase security warned of an attempted crypto transfer. The victim moved his assets and lost about $53,150.

Investigators had interviewed more than 70 victims when charges were announced in December 2025. The sentencing release raised the estimated victim count to about 100 nationwide.

How Spektor laundered the stolen crypto

Spektor’s operation extended beyond the initial deception.

Prosecutors said stolen crypto moved through repeated swaps, exchanges and mixing services before reaching cash-out points. Funds were converted into other tokens, sent to gambling platforms and used at online storefronts, including for gift cards and digital assets.

Blockchain analysis, transaction records and search warrants eventually tied Spektor to the operation. Prosecutors said his home IP address was linked to several wallets associated with stolen funds.

Investigators also found evidence that he recruited other social engineers through online forums and operated a Telegram channel under the handle @lolimfeelingevil, where prosecutors said he boasted about thefts. Messages recovered from his phone showed he discarded one hardware wallet after fraud allegations surfaced online and bought another.

Meanwhile, the sentence came in below what prosecutors sought.

Spektor pleaded guilty to the full indictment in exchange for a promised sentence of four to 12 years. The district attorney’s office objected and asked Justice Danny Chun to impose seven to 21 years, but the judge upheld the earlier commitment.

The court also ordered Spektor to forfeit more than $500,000 in cash, cryptocurrency, and personal property and to pay nearly $16 million in restitution.

That leaves the recovery picture unresolved. The forfeiture represents only a fraction of the estimated losses, and prosecutors did not say how much stolen crypto has been recovered or how much victims have received.

Coinbase warns customers that its support staff will never ask them to transfer funds to a new wallet, disclose seed phrases or provide passwords and authentication codes. The case leaves exchanges facing the harder problem of stopping impersonation scams that succeed before users ever interact with an official support channel.