Brooklyn man sent to prison for 12 years for stealing $16M in a Coinbase phishing scheme
The fraudster managed to scam about 100 people across the United States, convincing them of transferring funds to him, claiming their accounts had been hacked.
A Brooklyn resident is headed to prison for 12 years after pleading guilty to scamming nearly 100 Coinbase users out of roughly $16 million dollars, a New York district attorney said Wednesday.
Ronald Spektor, 23, ran a phishing and social engineering scheme for over a year, convincing his victims that they had been hacked and that they should transfer funds to accounts he controlled, said Eric Gonzalez, a New York district attorney.
Social engineering scams topped crypto threats in 2025 and are getting worse this year. WhiteBIT said nearly 41% of all crypto security incidents last year involved fraudsters deceiving victims. Earlier this month, a 22-year-old Singaporean pleaded guilty to a network of criminals that netted $245 million mostly from social engineering scams. A Chainalysis report noted that criminals were increasingly targeting individuals rather than infrastructure.
The attorney general’s office has also ordered Spektor to forfeit cash, cryptocurrency and personal property with an estimated value of more than half a million dollars and make restitution of almost $16 million.