Brooklyn DA Indicts ‘Blockchain Enemies’ Ringleader in $16M Coinbase Phishing Bust
Ronald Spektor faces 31 felonies after allegedly using the alias @lolimfeelingevil to drain $16M from Coinbase users, likely leveraging data from the May 2025 breach.
A 23-year-old Brooklyn man faces 31 felony charges for allegedly masterminding a $16 million social engineering scheme that drained accounts of approximately 100 Coinbase users. District Attorney Eric Gonzalez announced the indictment of Ronald Spektor on Friday, exposing a sophisticated operation that leveraged stolen personal data to impersonate exchange support staff.
The ‘LolImFeelingEvil’ Vector
Operating under the Telegram alias @lolimfeelingevil, Spektor allegedly bragged about his exploits in a channel titled “Blockchain enemies.” Prosecutors claim he utilized a classic support impersonation vector: contacting victims with urgent warnings that their assets were “at risk,” then coercing them into transferring funds to wallets under his control.
The scale of the theft suggests highly targeted selection of victims. One individual reportedly lost $6.5 million in a single instance. “He used psychological warfare to trick people into making bad decisions,” Gonzalez stated during the press conference, noting that Spektor allegedly treated the stolen millions “like Monopoly money,” funneling funds into online gambling sites and mixers.
“We allege that he chatted with someone about blowing $6 million on gambling. I guess he treated it like Monopoly money because it wasn’t his money.” . Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez
Institutional Context: The Data Leak Connection
While the indictment focuses on Spektor’s actions, the attack vector highlights the lingering fallout from the May 2025 data exposure. In that incident, approximately 70,000 Coinbase users had personal identifiable information (PII) exposed via third-party support agents. This “dox” data likely provided the necessary verifiable details, such as last four digits of SSNs or transaction history, that made Spektor’s impersonations credible to high-net-worth victims.
Seizure and Bail
Investigators from the DA’s Virtual Currency Unit recovered only a fraction of the stolen loot: $105,000 in cash and roughly $400,000 in crypto assets. Spektor, who pleaded not guilty, is being held on $500,000 bail. The discrepancy between the $16 million stolen and the $500,000 recovered underscores the difficulty of asset recovery once funds enter the mixer/gambling circuit.
