Consumer complaint received 2021-05-12
Company: Coinbase, Inc.
State: NY
Product: Money transfer, virtual currency, or money service
Sub-product: Mobile or digital wallet
Issue: Unauthorized transactions or other transaction problem

Complaint:
On XX/XX/2021, I made a purchase on the cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase in the amount of {$100000.00}, following an unsolicited increase in my daily limit on purchases from bank accounts from {$35000.00} to {$100000.00}. In the days prior, I had been liquidating my IRA to move it into crypto, and had made several purchases totaling {$35000.00} a day. The purchase limit increased incrementally over the day to {$35000.00}, so I was making two purchases a day, all in amounts between {$10000.00} and {$25000.00}. I thought nothing of the mysterious increase. Note that the Coinbase website indicates my limit as {$35000.00}, and does not describe a {$100000.00} limit anywhere. The increase appeared in my purchase window on my smartphone only. 

Immediately following my {$100000.00} purchase, five subsequent withdrawals were made from my bank account, totaling {$100000.00}, each in amounts matching prior legitimate transactions I had made. After my legitimate purchase, my bank account balance was {$17000.00}. After these five unauthorized transactions, my account became overdrawn by over {$71000.00}, taking all the cash that I had left myself with it. 

Initially, all five of the transactions were declined due to insufficient funds ; the first transaction was {$25000.00}, the next {$20000.00}, then {$18000.00}, then {$15000.00}, and finally {$10000.00}. Had the last two transactions been tried first, one of them would have cleared right off the bat. 

I immediately called my bank to report the transactions, and have reported them all as fraudulent. As of today, XX/XX/XXXX, Coinbase has cancelled all but one : the {$18000.00} transaction, initially declined, not the largest, not the smallest, but the largest one that my balance and small overdraft protection would clear. And it has been paid, meaning that $ XXXX is at this moment beyond retrieval. 

Coinbase has less than minimal customer support, and I have received only boilerplate replies and a case number. After having reviewed the complaints on here, and hearing of the Coinbase complaints flooding my bank 's fraud department, I can only presume that their lack of customer interface is by design. 

I also suspect that at this point, after years of these " hacks '' and subsequent complaints and bank activity, the fact the this fraud remains commonplace can only mean one thing, and that is that what I'll term Temporary Customer Fraud is part of Coinbase 's business model. Whether this is endemic to management, or the result of compromised employees, is uncertain. But Coinbase has done effectively nothing to address it. 

This is only possible in cryptocurrency, where having custody of customer funds for only a few days can bring in generous returns. The customer is returned the original amount, none the wiser that the profit made from that money has not been returned.

Yesterday Coinbase informed my that in 5 days they would reclaim the entire {$100000.00} from my cryptocurrency balance, and locked my account. Having not heard from them in any real sense since, I am submitting this complaint prior to their " reclamation '' in the hope of preventing it. From what I've read, I shouldn't be expecting resolution initiated by Coinbase anytime soon, and I don't have that time.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation