ZachXBT Profile picture
Nov 20, 2024 9 tweets 4 min read Read on X
1/ An investigation into the social engineering scammer Ronaldd (Ronald Spektor) who allegedly helped steal $6.5M last month from a single victim by impersonating Coinbase support. Image
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2/ A US based victim sent me a DM on Oct 7, 2024 after receiving a call from a spoofed number impersonating Coinbase support where they were coerced in to using a phishing site.

Theft address
bc1qra7s4wl8z2el335k40sdnaka04c2sdwjx5hs6q
0x730082b1847e1cef889ea6dce57641c96c104f2d

Phishing site: https(:)//19960018-coinbase(.)comImage
3/ An initial tracing of the theft saw all of the stolen funds flow to eXch on Ethereum and Bitcoin where funds were converted to Litecoin and transferred to numerous services. Image
4/ However just days after the theft Ronald began flexing his Ledger Live via Discord screenshare showing $3.1M received on October 8th, 2024.

Discord ID: 367190432507232257 Image
5/ Further strengthening the connection to Ronald, a now deleted Telegram channel in his bio associated with fraud shared screenshots of a wallet address only one hop from the $6.5M theft. Image
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6/ When reviewing the TON address which owns Ronald’s Telegram number you can see it was funded from multiple exchanges.

You can perform a timing analysis to trace through the exchange and find the funding address.

That address is tied to multiple other Coinbase withdrawals indicating more potential victims from impersonation scams.

TON source address
EQC7hYcQ_54HWpPhhT_i3gExFeCKspqdJmwGrZYBGTB09Ot4
ETH destination address
0x09d51a41434149b2f85358e518631f7004b0ae68Image
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7/ Multiple databreaches have publicly exposed Ronald’s information such as the Flipd/OG User breaches leaking his email and New York IPs which link to other breaches containing his alleged full name.
8/ Unfortunately this case does not have a happy ending as the victim deleted his X account after receiving bad advice from a friend to not trust people who online.

It still remains uncertain who Ronald’s accomplices were for the theft as the Ledger screenshots only shows $3.1M out of the $6.5M that was stolen.Image
Update: Ronald just deleted his Telegram account. Image

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More from @zachxbt

Jul 2
1/ My recent investigation uncovered more than $16.58M in payments since January 1, 2025 or $2.76M per month has been sent to North Korean IT workers hired as developers at various projects & companies.

To put this in perspective payments range from $3K-8K per month meaning they have infiltrated 345 jobs on the low end or 920 jobs on the high end.Image
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2/ Here’s a look into one of the six clusters I have been monitoring and was able to attribute 8 different DPRK ITWs that obtained roles at 12+ projects.

I traced out the payment addresses from the table to two consolidation addresses.

0x58225fed0714e5b9b235642eba7dae3714090a2d
0xa7f9555c34626eb81b64774356a40ca1a6a794caImage
3/ Sandy Nguyen (@bullishgopher) a DPRK ITW from this cluster was spotted via OSINT next to the North Korea flag at an event in Russia.

A small group of people still believe North Korean devs are just a conspiracy despite all of the IOCs, research, etc widely available. Image
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Read 10 tweets
Jun 27
1/ Multiple projects tied to Pepe creator Matt Furie & ChainSaw as well as another project Favrr were exploited in the past week which resulted in ~$1M stolen

My analysis links both attacks to the same cluster of DPRK IT workers who were likely accidentally hired as developers. Image
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2/ On Jun 18, 2025 at 4:25 am UTC ownership for ‘Replicandy’ from Matt Furie & ChainSaw was transferred to a new EOA 0x9Fca.

Jun 18, 2025
6:20 pm UTC: 0x9Fca withdrew mint proceeds from the contract
Jun 19, 2025
5:11 am UTC: 0x9Fca unpauses the mint

The attacker then minted NFTs and sold into bids causing the floor price to fall to zero.Image
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3/ On Jun 23, 2025 the attacker transferred ownership from the ChainSaw deployer to 0x9Fca for Peplicator, Hedz, Zogz.

Similarly the attacker minted NFTs and sold them into bids causing the floor price to fall to zero.

0x9Fca3AC75cd66f3c62bea8231886513b9fe191BD Image
Read 12 tweets
Jun 23
1/ An investigation into how the New York based social engineering scammer Daytwo/PawsOnHips (Christian Nieves) stole $4M+ from Coinbase users by impersonating customer support, bought luxury goods, and lost most of the funds gambling at casinos. Image
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2/ Daytwo operates a small call centre group and also works as a caller.

His group primarily coerced targets into setting up Coinbase wallet with a compromised seed on phishing sites.

Below is a video of his panel used and a sample of his voice when calling.
3/ In Nov 2024 $240K was stolen from an elderly victim with Daytwo’s worker Paranoia (Justin).

A private recording of the theft exists and was obtained (see part 1 below)

Theft address
bc1q35tw4f5qrfxrjy2v8g8d3majtujv28audm6yvp
AJU5yh4kDahLak4uq5n4ehJDVs2w2Lbhw9UHoseaBwV7
Read 11 tweets
May 9
1/ In late 2023 a former Yuga Labs security researcher was stopped at the airport after law enforcement mistakenly linked them to a $1.1M phishing theft from a Bored Ape owner.

Here’s an investigation into where the stolen funds went and who’s actually responsible. Image
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2/ In Dec 2022, a victim had 14 X BAYC NFTs phished in a social engineering scheme where purchased X accounts were used to convince the victim they wanted to license the IP rights for a film.

The scammer directed the victim to a phishing site where they had them sign a message draining their assets.

Theft address
0x9335da37d37bc5d46850eaee48f8b9ccbe94d9a2Image
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3/ In Sep 2023, Sam Curry a well known whitehat and former Yuga Labs security engineer was detained at the airport by law enforcement for questioning and was served with a grand jury subpoena (later dropped).

In reality as part of his security work at Yuga, he had been investigating the theft and used a private key put in the JavaScript of the website by the threat actor.

LE then had mistakenly reviewed logs from OpenSea which included his home IP address and used this to incorrectly link him as the suspect.Image
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Read 10 tweets
Mar 20
1/ An investigation into the alleged identity of the mysterious Hyperliquid whale tied to illicit activity that profited ~$20M via highly leveraged positions over the past couple weeks. Image
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2/ A trader opened multiple highly leveraged positions on Hyperliquid and GMX from Jan - Mar 2025.

They gained lots of attention this month after two onchain trades:

-Large ETH & BTC long position on 50X leverage just before Trump’s crypto reserve announcement by 0xe4d3 ($10M profit)

-Large BTC short position on 40X leverage by 0xf3F4 ($9M profit)Image
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3/ I went and identified the main counterparties of 0xf3f:

0x7ab8c59db7b959bb8c3481d5b9836dfbc939af21
0x312f8282f68e17e33b8edde9b52909a77c75d950
0xab3067c58811ade7aa17b58808db3b4c2e86f603
0xe4d31c2541a9ce596419879b1a46ffc7cd202c62

This cluster is to tied to Roobet, Binance, Gamdom, ChangeNOW, Shuffle, Alphapo, BC Game, & Metawin accounts.Image
Read 11 tweets
Feb 3
1/ Over the past few months I imagine you have seen many Coinbase users complain on X about their accounts suddenly being restricted.

This is the result of aggressive risk models and Coinbase’s failure to stop its users losing $300M+ per year to social engineering scams. Image
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2/ Myself and @tanuki42_ spent time reviewing Coinbase withdrawals and gathering data from my DMs for high confidence thefts on various chains.

Below is a table we created which shows $65M stolen from Coinbase users in Dec 2024 - Jan 2025.

Our number is likely much lower than the actual amount stolen as our data was limited to my DMs and thefts we discovered on-chain which does not account for Coinbase support tickets and police reports we do not have access to.Image
3/ Let’s walk through how these Coinbase social engineering scams work.

A victim reached out to me last month after losing ~$850K.

Graphing out this theft lead to a consolidation address with 25+ other victims tied to ‘coinbase-hold.eth’.

Theft address
0xc8234dda2bc3758eb90224d0025871001e8ee7b9
bc1q4ks5gus8uv88vk8yage4r89kv8uxlgwhemz545Image
Read 13 tweets

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