American entrepreneur and investor Mark Cuban was the victim of a cryptocurrency scam, losing a substantial amount of digital assets in a recent incident. Late in the evening of September 15, 2023, it was discovered that Cuban’s MetaMask cryptocurrency wallet, named “Mark Cuban 2”, had been drained of approximately $8.7 million.
The discovery was first made by a crypto enthusiast known as Wazz, who noticed that the wallet had been inactive for over five months. Wazz took to social media, raising concerns about the suspicious activity, which set off a series of events that led to the revelation of Cuba’s losses.
Cuban, known for his involvement in various business ventures and as a prominent figure in the cryptocurrency sector, later confirmed the extent of his losses. It revealed that the attack not only resulted in the loss of five Ethereum (ETH) tokens worth around $8,170 at current market prices, but also resulted in the disappearance of other valuable digital assets. Among the assets lost were USD Coin (USDC), Polygon (MATIC), Lido staked Ethereum (stETH), and tokens from SuperRare and Ethereum Name Service.
However, it hasn’t been a total disaster for the billionaire investor. Quick action on his part allowed him to transfer around $2 million from USDC to Coinbase Custody, preventing the majority of his assets from being stolen by the scammers.
Cuban believes his encounter with the fraudulent scheme may have been facilitated by downloading a corrupted version of the MetaMask app, unwittingly allowing the fraudsters access to his wallet. He said his MetaMask app behaved erratically, crashing several times before the incident occurred.
This is not the first time that Cuba has suffered losses linked to cryptocurrencies. In a previous incident in 2021, he reportedly suffered financial setbacks when Iron Finance’s stablecoin TITAN experienced a catastrophic collapse in what was rumored to be an all-in.
Another cryptocurrency-related breach came to light on Sunday when global cryptocurrency exchange CoinEx revealed that its hot wallets had been compromised. On September 12, 2023, unauthorized transactions involving the cryptocurrencies Ethereum (ETH), Tron (TRON), and Polygon (MATIC) were detected, resulting in the theft of a significant amount of digital assets used to support the operations of the stock market.
