A former customer service representative of Coinbase has been taken into custody in India for allegedly assisting hackers in the theft of confidential customer data from the company’s database.

This arrest took place in Hyderabad, Asia’s tech hub and the capital of Telangana state, with Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong suggesting that additional arrests may follow.

Coinbase is a prominent cryptocurrency exchange and financial services provider in the United States. It allows users to trade cryptocurrencies and offers digital wallet services to over 100 million registered customers across 100 countries, with quarterly trading volumes exceeding $235 billion.

In May 2025, the platform reported that certain customer support agents had facilitated hackers, who subsequently demanded a ransom of $20 million to prevent the publication of information acquired from a compromised database.

Coinbase clarified that the incident had impacted around 69,500 customers, revealing their names, birthdates, the last four digits of their Social Security numbers (SSNs), physical addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses.

In some cases, the compromised information also included scanned documents involved in the “know your customer” (KYC) protocols.

By June, Coinbase disclosed that the breach had originated from TaskUs, an Indian outsourcing firm, whose employees were bribed to gain unauthorized access to the system.

In a statement reported by BleepingComputer, TaskUs emphasized that only two individuals were involved in the breach, leading them to shut down the entire department, which had 226 employees.

The arrest of the customer service agent occurred shortly after charges were filed against Ronald Spektor, a 23-year-old from Brooklyn, accused of impersonating Coinbase to defraud customers.

Victims were led to believe that their accounts were compromised and were coerced into moving their digital assets to a “safe” wallet, which turned out to be Spektor’s own wallet.

Through this scheme, Spektor amassed $16 million from 100 victims, with only $605,000 currently recovered.

In a statement provided to BleepingComputer, Coinbase asserted that due to the traceability of cryptocurrency transactions, authorities can track funds effectively when platforms and law enforcement cooperate.

“At Coinbase, we work directly with law enforcement, utilizing blockchain tracking and other tools to help identify offenders and aid in prosecutions. We will not relent,” a spokesperson from Coinbase stated to BleepingComputer.

Update [December 29, 16:06 ET]: article updated with a statement from Coinbase received after publishing time.

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