Brooklyn Resident Gets 4–12 Years for Impersonating Coinbase Support

Ronald Spector, a 23-year-old from Sheepshead Bay, was sentenced in Brooklyn Supreme Court to four to twelve years in prison. He pleaded guilty to 31 counts after scamming roughly 100 Coinbase users out of about 16 million dollars in cryptocurrency.

Using only phone calls, Spector posed as exchange support staff and warned victims that their funds were about to be stolen. He then walked them through moving the coins to a wallet he controlled and quickly cashed out.

Prosecutors traced the stolen crypto through multiple exchanges and into gambling sites and online stores. The court ordered Spector to forfeit over 500,000 dollars in cash and digital assets and to pay nearly 16 million dollars in restitution.

The case is one of the largest social-engineering prosecutions tied to Coinbase following the customer-data leak in May 2025.

Based on information from https://cryptonews.net