The billionaire investor believes he downloaded a malicious version of MetaMask, resulting in losses of nearly $1M across 10 different cryptocurrencies.
Mark Cuban, a billionaire entrepreneur and DeFi investor, fell victim to a crypto scam on Friday, September 16.
Cuban lost $870,000 in 10 different cryptocurrencies and tokens, including stablecoins, Lido staked Ether, Ethereum Name Service, and more.
“Someone got me for 5 Eth,” Cuban confirmed to DL News, adding, “I went on MetaMask for the first time in months. They must have been watching,”
The breach was first noted by pseudonymous on-chain sleuth WazzCrypto on X, who noticed the suspicious movements on EtherScan.
“I downloaded a version of MetaMask with some shit in it,”
Cuban said that he likely downloaded a fake version of MetaMask – a common phishing tactic used by fraudsters in both Web2 and Web3.
He said he first noticed that something was wrong when MetaMask kept crashing. To protect his assets, Cuban quickly locked his NFTs on OpenSea and transferred all of his Polygon over to Coinbase using Coinbase’s hardware security key, saving himself $2.5 million in MATIC.
Phishing scams are incredibly popular in the crypto space, and they are much easier to fall for than many think. Very often, the fake application or link will look almost identical to the legitimate application, which can be easily overlooked if not paying close attention. The goal of a phishing attack is to obtain sensitive information such as seed phrases and private keys.
Read more: 8 tips for keeping your crypto and NFTs safe
Just last week, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin’s X account was compromised with a phishing link, resulting in loses of $700,000 from users who clicked the link.
Additionally, the week before, a crypto whale lost a massive $24M in staked Ethereum to a phishing attack, which is one of the biggest individual losses in crypto history.
Disclaimer: CryptoPlug does not recommend that any cryptocurrency should be bought, sold, or held by you. Do conduct your own due diligence and consult your financial advisor before making any investment decisions.
