Mark Cuban, a multi-billionaire best known for owning the Dallas Mavericks and appearing on “Shark Tank,” is said to have lost more than $870,000 in cryptocurrency tokens over the weekend after falling for a phishing scheme.
Cuban revealed to a news site that he unwittingly downloaded a fake version of the well-known cryptocurrency wallet MetaMask from Google, giving con artists access to part of his cryptocurrency holdings, including 5 ether. After the wallet named “Mark Cuban 2” had been idle for more than 150 days, a pseudonymous blockchain analyst shared images of the transaction history and discovered the theft.
Cuban told, Someone got him for five Ethereum. he is very certain he downloaded a copy of MetaMask that had some crap.
Cuban stated that rather than looking for or confirming the proper MetaMask site, he discovered the phoney MetaMask download link by searching for “Circle,” a significant stablecoin issuer, on Google. He asserted that the scammers were presumably “watching” him and waiting for an opportunity to obtain his security information. And he added that he moved his remaining money to a Coinbase account with two-factor authentication.
Cuban said, None of his other accounts gave up anything because he was only working with the one that got hacked.
The scammers stole a total of 10 different cryptocurrencies, in addition to the 5 ether, which is worth roughly $8,000 at the current exchange rate. They also stole Cuban’s USD stablecoins, staked ETH, RARE tokens, and more.
Cuban is merely the most well-known investor to fall for a cryptocurrency scam recently. The week prior, hackers broke into Vitalik Buterin’s X (formerly Twitter) account and stole around $700,000 from X users.
Due to cryptocurrency’s permissionless and third-party-free nature, con artists often only need a minimal amount of personal data from their victims in order to access and steal their crypto assets. Additionally, it is extremely challenging to trace the movements of or reclaim these assets once they have vanished.
Cuban has learned that keeping cryptocurrency investments offline in cold storage or working with a reputable custodian is the safest way to preserve them.
