Mark Cuban Loses Nearly $1M to Crypto Scam

Dallas Mavericks owner and billionaire technology investor Mark Cuban lost some $870,000 worth of tokens over the weekend after likely clicking on a phishing link after “months of inactivity.”

Phishing attacks trick users into divulging sensitive data, downloading malware, and exposing their private information. Such attacks are extremely common in the crypto industry, as users may fail to check the source of requests on a crypto wallet, or unknowingly download a fake application that mimics the original – one that exists only to steal holdings.

Cuban’s wallet was drained of U.S.-pegged stablecoins, staked ETH (stETH), RARE$0.01533 tokens, and some ENS$6.1023 domains, blockchain data shows. These movements were first spotted by on-chain sleuth @wazzcrypto.

Later, Cuban was likely alerted of these transactions and managed to save over $2.5 million worth of Polygon’s MATIC tokens by logging into the wallet and transferring the tokens to a Coinbase exchange address.

The phishing attack apparently seemed to stem from a fake MetaMask wallet application downloaded by Cuban, he told DLNews.

This was the second phishing attack to hit a high-profile person in as many weeks. Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin’s X account was compromised in a phishing attack in early September. Buterin did not seem to lose his own funds, but users lost a cumulative $700,000 by sending tokens to an illicit link that was seemingly endorsed by Buterin.