Ronald Spektor, a 23-year-old from Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, was sentenced Wednesday to four to 12 years in prison for a phishing and social-engineering scheme that stole nearly $16 million from about 100 Coinbase users across the United States, the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office announced. Spektor pleaded guilty on September 2 to all 31 counts against him, including first-degree money laundering, first-degree grand larceny and criminal possession of stolen property, under a deal Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Danny Chun accepted over the objections of prosecutors, who had sought seven to 21 years.
How the scheme worked
Over the course of about a year, Spektor contacted Coinbase customers while posing as a representative of the exchange, telling them their assets were at risk from a hacker and convincing them to move their funds to a new wallet they believed only they controlled. The wallet was actually accessible to Spektor, who emptied the accounts and laundered the proceeds by routing the cryptocurrency through swapping and mixing services and into gambling platforms, where portions were consolidated and converted into cash, gift cards and other digital assets. Investigators traced roughly $15.94 million in losses to about 100 victims nationwide, some of whom lost $1 million or more.
An online trail of bragging
The district attorney’s Virtual Currency Unit identified Spektor through transaction records, blockchain analysis, digital forensics and evidence from multiple search warrants, linking his home IP address to wallets that received stolen funds. Prosecutors said he used the Telegram handle @lolimfeelingevil and ran a channel called “Blockchain enemies,” where he bragged about the heists and wrote that he had gambled away $6 million while making millions more through scamming. He also recruited accomplices through online forums and, after fraud allegations surfaced online, discarded a cryptocurrency hardware wallet and bought a new one, according to text messages recovered from his phone.
A warning for crypto scammers
The judge also ordered Spektor to forfeit cash, cryptocurrency and personal property worth more than $500,000 and to pay restitution of almost $16 million. District Attorney Eric Gonzalez framed the outcome as a warning: “We will follow the digital trail wherever it leads and aggressively pursue those responsible,” he said, calling the case “a digital robbery of nearly 100 victims.” The sentencing follows a string of recent enforcement actions against crypto crime, including money-laundering arrests in the UAE and Sweden and a warning from SlowMist’s CISO about an iOS exploit stealing wallet keys. The Brooklyn office reiterated that exchanges such as Coinbase never call customers or ask them to move crypto to a “safe wallet.”
