Brooklyn man gets 4–12 years for $16M Coinbase scam

A Brooklyn judge on Sept. 23 sentenced Ronald Spektor, 23, to four to 12 years in prison after he pleaded guilty on Sept. 2 to a 31-count indictment charging first-degree money laundering, grand larceny and criminal possession of stolen property, the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office said.

Prosecutors allege Spektor ran a fake customer-support operation that targeted about 100 Coinbase users across the United States. Court filings describe callers posing as Coinbase security staff, sending spoofed two-factor authentication alerts and warning victims that hackers were attempting to drain their accounts. Victims were instructed to move funds to wallets presented as secure; those wallets were accessible to the attackers and the transfers were executed by the account holders themselves.

In one case detailed in court records, a Pennsylvania man received fake two-factor messages and a caller identifying himself as “Fred Wilson” before transferring about $53,150 to an address controlled by the fraudsters.

Investigators interviewed more than 70 victims when charges were announced in December 2025, and the district attorney later estimated the total number of victims at about 100 nationwide. Prosecutors tied the scheme to losses of roughly $15.944 million. Some victims lost more than $1 million.

The court ordered Spektor to forfeit more than $500,000 in cash, cryptocurrency and personal property, and to pay nearly $16 million in restitution. Prosecutors had urged a longer sentence of seven to 21 years, but the judge upheld the four-to-12-year term called for in the plea agreement. Officials have not disclosed how much of the stolen crypto has been recovered for victims.

After the initial transfers, prosecutors say the stolen funds were moved through repeated swaps, exchanges and mixing services to obscure their origin. Funds were converted into other tokens, used on gambling platforms and spent at online stores for gift cards and digital assets. Blockchain analysis, transaction records and search warrants linked several wallets involved in the thefts to Spektor’s home IP address. Messages recovered from his phone indicate he discarded a hardware wallet after fraud allegations surfaced online and later obtained another.

Court documents also allege Spektor recruited other social engineers through online forums and operated a Telegram channel under the handle @lolimfeelingevil where he boasted about thefts. Those materials were part of the evidence used to tie him to the scheme.

Coinbase cautions 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. Prosecutors describe the case as an example of impersonation scams that convince account holders to move assets before any contact with official support channels.