Coinbase account holders: Heads up

Diddums · 9 Apr 2025 at 19:54

My wife just had "Coinbase" on the phone. English lad, calling from a Bristol number. Sounded very, very authentic. She had him on speaker and he sent her an email with some or other case number, like this:

I googled the number and didn't have many results whereas normally Coinbase would come up immediately if it was their number. Told her to hang up and the guy started asking why, and that if she called back she'd be assigned a new case worker and would be on hold for ages. At this point it became too obvious.

A few minutes later my phone rings and you guessed it, same bloke. He obviously saw the surnames and just hung up and blocked me.

Just a heads up folks, this was was extremely convincing. After a bit of research, I found out that Coinbase will never call you.

radderfire · 9 Apr 2025 at 20:05

If someone calls you out of the blue saying they're a bank or financial institution, it's a scam.

Diddums · 9 Apr 2025 at 20:08

radderfire said:
If someone calls you out of the blue saying they're a bank or financial institution, it's a scam.

Yep, but this one was very good. Started off telling her that someone was attempting to log in to her account from another device, and had she added a new device to her account recently. All in a very well spoken English accent, from an English phone number. Normally I wouldn't even post this stuff as we're all rather used to it but this was a whole new angle.

The_Arbiter · 9 Apr 2025 at 20:28

Sounds like one that's worth reporting.

Tram · 9 Apr 2025 at 20:36

radderfire said:
If someone calls you out of the blue saying they're a bank or financial institution, it's a scam.

And remember don't call the bank straight after, they may not have hung up. Call the bank from a different number.

darael · 9 Apr 2025 at 20:41

Tram said:
And remember don't call the bank straight after, they may not have hung up. Call the bank from a different number.

This just applies to landlines.

smokedog · 9 Apr 2025 at 20:54

I'm not going to fall for there's a pigeon in coinbase wallet and your assets needs to be transferred to a new wallet again.

Ninco! · 9 Apr 2025 at 21:09

Just be aware that scammers are aware that many people are now hanging up on cold calls. Now they are leaving messages for you to call them. For example, they'll leave a message at your work to call.

They are exploiting the fact that people forget to lookup or check the number before they call them back. So if you make the call, you simply end up speaking to the scammer.

If your bank is querying a payment, it means that they've stopped the transaction. Even if you ignore a genuine call, dont panic. They'll wait until you contact them or they make contact with you.