My complaint:
I am from United Kingdom England, I am a severely sightedblind person. I have fell victim to a liquidity mining pool scam using Coinbase and Coinbase wallet platforms where I used CB payments ltd to send funds to the Coinbase account. I had around 4 bitcoins stored on my Coinbase account which I had since 2020-2022 which I had invested in over the years.
I wanted to explain in detail how I was scammed everything I had and all the money I borrowed from my family and friends, also my investments which I had stored on my Coinbase account.
I am so distressed and in so much debt. A lady contacted me on WhatsApp saying she’s looking for Daniel, I told her that she had the wrong number from there she started telling me she is from Korea and visiting a cousin in the UK and if I could tell her some nice places to visit from there, she friended me and groomed me. After a week or so she told me about how she’s making good daily profits on some investment on a mining pool and got me interested as I knew a little about bitcoins as I had some invested over the years. She told me about a liquidity mining pool called AAVE mining pool where I would be mining ETH and make a daily profit of 1.5% on the USDT I hold in the mining pool. I was told by the lady I need to download the Coinbase wallet app so I could get the liquidity mining pool, so I downloaded the Coinbase wallet app as I already had a Coinbase account.
I downloaded the Coinbase wallet and created the account with Coinbase wallet where there was no terms or conditions telling me about giving access to my wallet to third party websites or connecting my wallet to contracts or other projects no scam warnings no details about the wallet what is did or any information about the Coinbase wallet.
Once I downloaded and created the account I was told by the lady to put a link in the Coinbase wallet app and click on rewards to download the liquidity AAVE mining pool when downloading this I was never made aware of any warnings or anything to indicate this to be a scam it was done on the Coinbase wallet which was in Coinbase wallet browser and they have 0 protection or any warnings or detections in place to stop this from happening.
Once I downloads the mining pool, I was not aware that I had given access to the scammers to control my wallet and they had hacked it.
Coinbase should have some kind of fraud detection in place to spot these types of scams on their platform, as checking the internet this kind of scam has been happening since 2020 using the poor security Coinbase wallet app has to protect customers from these types of scams where it has so many bugs and falls that it’s an easy target for scammers
The lady sent me some small amount of ETH in $15 and she showed me how it worked then she told me to put a small amount in and see the investments profit and see how everything worked. I put around £100 to test and saw a profit like she said.
Then I started to invest more when I converted my bitcoin I had in Coinbase to USDT and sending it to Coinbase wallet where the scammers were sending it out and showing me it had gone onto my liquidity mining pool balance each day i was making good profits as on the mining pool it was showing my USDT was going up by 1.5% each day. This looked all ok as it was through Coinbase wallet app and on the liquidity mining pool it showed logos of Coinbase and other crypto companies and said on there it was regulated by Coinbase, and it was one of its partners in this project it looked so real as it was through the Coinbase wallet and Coinbase I thought would not allow these kind of things happen on their platform.
Which I can’t believe Coinbase have not done anything to protect victims like me as it’s been done in the Coinbase platform, and they are aware of such scams like this.
Once I tried to withdraw from the pool, I was told I needed to put more money in I was mentally stressed and the lady on WhatsApp was pushing me and grooming me I converted all my crypto I had saved on Coinbase into USDT and sent it to my compromised hacked Coinbase wallet app,
I feel Coinbase should’ve have been ed why for over several years I had these crypto invested and stored on my Coinbase account and all of a sudden why am I converting them to USDT and sending them out, there was nothing to or ask me why I am doing this. So, I sent everything I had in Coinbase out to my hacked Coinbase wallet app. It was around £70k at the time.
There was nothing in place from Coinbase to prevent this from happening, no warnings or any indication of what am doing could be a scam. I lost everything I had due to Coinbase poor security and negligence.
I feel Coinbase have done nothing to protect me from losing this money to this scam on the poor no security easy to hack Coinbase wallet app.
Once I lost this, I was told I needed to raise another 60,000 USDT to get my liquidity mining pool to allow me to withdraw there was no way I could raise this so the lady who was playing with my emotions and groomed me told me she could get half and I should raise half. In December 2022 I borrowed £22,300 from my friends and family from 27th December 2022- -30th December 2022 I sent 4 payments to CB payments and then converted them into USDT and sent out to the Coinbase wallet, not once was I ed by the bank or Coinbase why am I making these payments then converting to USDT and sending them out.
Coinbase should have been more ed why am I sending so much money out in a short space of time.
I feel Coinbase or CB payments Ltd have done nothing to protect me from falling victim to this scam. Also, Coinbase or CB payments have done no AML checks nothing on me I think in 2018 I put my passport in but that’s all and I have been told the policies have changed many times since then
I have contacted a solicitor who has done some investigations as it is very difficult to find the name you are trading under on the FCA register in the UK.
The solicitor has found that CB Payments Ltd have had many different directors over the years on the company when you check on company’s house
Also, there is another company called Coinbase UK which has been dissolved on December 2022 which has the same directors as CB payments. When you check the company records in America for Coinbase Inc they also have the same directors which has raised some serious concerns with my solicitor.
I am looking to take legal action and take you to court if the matter is not resolved for your poor lack of security and negligence to protect customers. I would also contact trading standards and watchdog about this.
I would hope you could see how much I have mentally and financially been impacted to this scam and fell victim to this scam and hope you could give me back my losses which I have lost to this without me going down the legal route and taking legal action.
When you check Coinbase Inc in America there are many people taking legal action and lawsuits for the security negligence of Coinbase and they failings to protect customers from these types of scams.
I feel like am not the only victim to fall to this sophisticated scam using many loopholes in the Coinbase wallet app.
How can Coinbase allow this to happen on their Platform.
Suggested solution:
I would like a full refund for my lodes
