Crypto Chaos: Coinbase Insider Sells Souls for $200 a Pop 😱

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The dust settled heavy over Coinbase, like a bad hangover after a bitcoin binge. Court papers, fresh as yesterday’s regret, spilled the beans on a breach so big it’d make a Wall Street banker blush. Somewhere between 69,000 souls got their secrets snatched by an inside job-because nothing says “trustworthy” like a customer service rep moonlighting as a data pimp.

The Great Digital Heist (Starring Greed & Stupidity)

Meet Ashita Mishra, TaskUs’s very own Judas with a smartphone. Starting December 2024, she snapped photos of Social Security numbers, bank details, and IDs like she was curating a gallery of financial ruin. Price per masterpiece? A cool $200. Buyers? Hackers with the charm of used-car salesmen and the ethics of a raccoon in a dumpster.

The scam was simple: pretend to be Coinbase, sweet-talk folks into moving their money, then vanish like a fart in the wind. Some lost everything-retirement funds, college savings, dreams of that sweet, sweet Lambo. And Coinbase? Well, they sat on the news like a hen on a rotten egg, waiting three weeks to squawk about it. By then, the thieves had already turned victims’ accounts into ghost towns.

The Paper Trail (Because Bureaucracy Never Sleeps)

Coinbase coughed up the ugly details to Maine regulators, because nothing says “we’re sorry” like a government-mandated confession:

  • Total victims: 69,461 (nice)
  • Maine’s unlucky few: 217 (probably regretting lobster rolls now)
  • Breach date: December 26, 2024 (Merry Fraud-mas!)
  • Discovery: May 11, 2025 (slow clap)
  • Cause: A human-shaped security hole
  • Notification: May 30, 2025 (better late than never, right?)
  • Consolation prize: One year of credit monitoring (because identity theft is just a subscription service now)

TaskUs Plays Whack-a-Mole (Badly)

TaskUs allegedly knew about Mishra’s side hustle by January 2025. Their solution? Fire 300 employees and disband the investigation team-like solving a rat problem by burning down the barn. Plaintiffs call it negligence; we call it corporate performance art.

Coinbase, ever the optimist, blamed “rogue overseas agents” (because outsourcing blame is cheaper than fixing things). They offered victims identity protection-because nothing says “trust us again” like a $1 million insurance policy and a pat on the back.

But the damage sticks like gum to a shoe. Fraud’s still rolling, and some folks are sweating bullets-turns out, handing criminals your home address isn’t great for sleep. Who knew?

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2025-09-17 08:34