A scammer who went by the online name “lolimfeelingevil” will face 12 years in prison after pleading guilty for playing his part in stealing $16 million in crypto from Coinbase users.
Ronald Spektor, 23, from Brooklyn, New York, posed as a representative from America’s biggest crypto exchange and told victims their accounts were under threat from hackers, according to the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office.
He then socially engineered them to move their cryptocurrency into what they believed was a secure new wallet. Social engineering is when scammers manipulate victims into sending funds or handing over valuable information.
Spektor controlled that wallet, emptied it, and laundered the funds through swapping and mixing services and crypto gambling sites — with some victims losing $1 million or more.
“Our Virtual Currency Unit painstakingly pieced together the digital proof that identified the defendant behind this sophisticated scheme, followed the money that he stole and compiled iron-clad evidence against him,” District Attorney Gonzalez said in a Wednesday statement.
“This case should put crypto scammers on notice: we will follow the digital trail wherever it leads and aggressively pursue those responsible.”
Investigators with the DA’s Virtual Currency Unit linked Spektor’s home IP address to several of the victims’ wallets. They also found that he recruited accomplices on online forums and bragged about his thefts on a Telegram channel under the handle “@lolimfeelingevil.”
In recovered messages he claimed to have gambled away $6 million in crypto. After fraud allegations surfaced online, he got rid of a hardware wallet and bought a new one.
Spektor pleaded guilty on September 2 to all 31 counts, including first-degree money laundering and grand larceny.
Justice Danny Chun imposed the promised sentence over prosecutors’ objections, since they had sought seven to 21 years. Spektor must also forfeit more than $500,000 in assets and pay nearly $16 million in restitution.
Officials reminded the public that Coinbase will never call customers or ask them to move funds to a “safe wallet.”