Mark Cuban on how he lost $870,000 to crypto scam — ‘They must have been watching’

Mark Cuban, billionaire entrepreneur and owner of the Dallas Mavericks, confirmed to DL News that he has lost approximately $870,000 to a crypto scam late on Friday.

The sudden movements in a wallet marked on blockchain explorer EtherScan as “Mark Cuban 2″ were first spotted by pseudonymous on-chain sleuth WazzCrypto.

Cuban was unaware of the wallet movements when approached by DL News and later said, “Someone got me for 5 eth.”

“I went on MetaMask for the first time in months. They must have been watching,” he told DL News.

Cuban’s losses extended beyond 5 Ether, worth about $9,000 at current prices. Altogether, he was set back by around $870,000 across 10 cryptocurrencies.

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Notable assets lost in the hack included a range of stablecoins and various tokens like Lido staked Ether, SuperRare, and Ethereum Name Service.

MetaMask scam?

“I’m pretty sure I downloaded a version of MetaMask with some shit in it,” Cuban told DL News. He said he had searched for Circle on Google, not MetaMask.

He said that it happened when he went to his account to clean it up on his phone.

“MetaMask crashed a couple times. I just stopped. Then you emailed me. So I locked my NFTs on OpenSea. Transferred all my Polygon in the account,” Cuban said.

Many fraudsters create fake MetaMask extensions or applications, tricking users into providing their private keys or seed phrases. Once these malicious actors gain access, they can easily drain users’ cryptocurrency wallets.

“Since I was only working with the account that got hacked, none of my others gave up anything,” he said.

Cuban said he managed to transfer remaining assets to Coinbase with “the dongle that Coinbase uses to authentication.”

Cuban the DeFi investor

Cuban is one of few public figures personally active in DeFi as an investor.

But that engagement hasn’t been without its hitches.

During the 2021 bull market, Cuban was a liquidity provider for Iron Finance’s TITAN stablecoin.

But in June 2021, TITAN’s price suddenly crashed to zero in a “bank run” and his holdings were wiped out as a result. “I got hit like everyone else,” he told Decrypt at the time. “Live and learn.”

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In the midst of a bear market, this month has been marked by a series of high-profile crypto scams and hacks.

Crypto’s biggest online casino, Stake.com, saw $41 million drained from the platform last week, and CoinEx was reportedly hacked for over $50 million on Wednesday.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin’s X account was compromised last Saturday. Buterin’s hacker made away with around $700,000 from unwitting users by sharing a post that contained a phishing link.

Blockchain transfers, by design, are irreversible. Once a transaction is confirmed and added to the blockchain ledger, it becomes a permanent record that cannot be altered or deleted.

Update, September 16: This article has been revised to include the details regarding the incident.