Consumer complaint received 2022-09-12
Company: Coinbase, Inc.
State: CA
Product: Money transfer, virtual currency, or money service
Sub-product: Virtual currency
Issue: Fraud or scam

Complaint:
I had met a person through a dating app named XXXX. We had been chatting regularly and moved to text and then to telegram which is a messaging service. Her username on there is XXXX. She said that she invested in cryptocurrency mining and I figured I had gotten to know this person a little so a small investment wouldn't hurt. I went on the app store on my iphone and downloaded both coinbase and coinbase wallet which are very secure cryptocurrency platforms. 

After downloading them I bought XXXX of Tether ( USDT ) cryptocurrency and transferred it to the coinbase wallet. She then sent me a link for a mining pool https : XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX. I paid a small fee and it looked legitimate. I did not know that I was giving access to allow a third party access to my coinbase wallet. I would be mining Ethereum ( ETH ) daily and could exchange and then withdraw it to my coinbase wallet account. I made a little bit of money so I felt nothing was wrong at the time. XXXX then encouraged me to add more money as this would mean my mining percentages would increase and that money sitting in the bank was not accruing money anyway so it was wasted there. I then added XXXX worth of USDT into the coinbase wallet. This cycle continued once more with me adding XXXX USDT into the wallet as there was a reward in the mining pool of around XXXX USDT for having over XXXX USDT in your wallet as a bonus. 

Some friends at this point discovered I had been investing in cryptocurrency mining and one friend stated he had been scammed out of money before and said when he tried to withdraw money back to his coinbase and then to his bank account the money disappeared. I then withdrew XXXX from my coinbase wallet to coinbase with no issue, but when i tried to withdraw the remaining money, that transaction failed. Immediately following this failed transaction there was another transaction that sent the full amount ( XXXX ) of my remaining USDT to another recipient. 

I called coinbase and filed a complaint and they returned me an email with the following information " After an extensive review of the transaction details provided, the unauthorized activity you reported appears to have resulted from a signed transaction that approved a malicious third party to transfer funds from your Wallet on XXXX XXXX XXXX  XXXX. You can review this Approve transaction associated with your address on XXXX, using this link : XXXX XXXX XXXX This transaction gave the malicious third party access to the funds held inside your Coinbase Wallet. We appreciate that you did not consent to this Approval transaction with the intent of actively compromising your funds. However this can be a common method through which a malicious third party can target and victimize users. '' I have netted a XXXX loss in this scamming incident and coinbase has stated they are willing to fully cooperate with all law enforcement investigations pertaining to my wallet 's compromise. 

Please let me know if there is any other information I can give to assist you in this investigation. 

Thank you for your time.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation