Top Class Actions’s website and social media posts use affiliate links. If you make a purchase using such links, we may receive a commission, but it will not result in any additional charges to you. Please review our Affiliate Link Disclosure for more information.
Coinbase Wallets Class Action Overview:
- Who: A pair of Coinbase wallet holders locked out of their crypto accounts filed a class action lawsuit Tuesday.
- Why: The cryptocurrency exchange company allegedly froze them and other account holders out of their Coinbase wallets or allowed them to be hacked.
- Where: The class action lawsuit was launched against Coinbase Global, Inc and Coinbase, Inc in California federal court.
A pair of cryptocurrency users say their Coinbase wallets were either hacked or frozen without warning and their pleas to release their accounts so they could access funds went unheeded by Coinbase Global, Inc and Coinbase, Inc, in a class action lawsuit lodged against the companies in California federal court Tuesday.
Lead plaintiffs, Cristian Kelly and Kenneth Thall, want to represent others who lost access to their Coinbase wallets. They say Coinbase, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the US, misled them about the security of its services and “real-time” access to funds stored with the company.
Coinbase users can store their cryptocurrencies in a digital “wallet,” as well as buy, sell, spend, and trade cryptocurrency.
Coinbase Wallets Hacked, Frozen Without Warning
Kelly claims that his Coinbase wallet — containing approximately $18,000 in Ethereum cryptocurrency — was potentially hacked when he called the company to add a feature to his account. He says that instead of helping him get to the bottom of the situation, Coinbase froze him out of his account for months.
Thall alleges that he was alerted by his bank that his Coinbase wallet containing about $8,000 in Bitcoin may have been hacked. Thall says that when he brought up his concerns to Coinbase, he was similarly locked out of his account for an extended period of time.
Kelly and Thall say that they decided to store their cryptocurrency in Coinbase wallets based on the companies’ promise to provide “customers a secure way to purchase, store, and transact in crypto assets” and provided “24/7/365” access to their funds.
Instead, the plaintiffs say that they were locked out of their Coinbase wallets for extended periods of time.
“Because of the extreme volatility of cryptocurrencies’ value – with freefalls of 40% within 24 hours not unheard of – the inability to access an account to sell, buy, or trade cryptocurrency leads to severe financial loss,” alleges the class action lawsuit. “Making matters worse, Coinbase fails to timely respond to customer pleas for support and help, and also fails to preserve and safeguard customer funds as it promises.”
Indeed, Kelly and Thall each claim that the crypto company ignored their repeated requests to unfreeze their Coinbase wallets. They want to represent consumers nationwide who signed on with the rapidly growing crypto exchange company.
The plaintiffs are seeking damages on behalf of Coinbase wallet holders, along with a court order forcing the company to unfreeze accounts.
Coinbase has found itself in legal hot water recently, with another group of Coinbase wallet holders lodging a class action lawsuit in California federal court in June. Last year, the company paid out nearly $1 million to settle claims that they aided and abetted the theft of Cryptsy cryptocurrency.
Do you have a Coinbase wallet? Have you ever been hacked or locked out of that account for no reason? Tell us about your experience in the comments section!
The plaintiffs are represented by Timothy G. Blood, Thomas J. O’Reardon II, and James M. Davis fo Blood Hurst & O’Reardon, LLP and James M. Evangelista, David J. Worley, Kristi Stahnke McGregor, and Leslie G. Toran of Evangelista Worely, LLC.
The Coinbase Wallets Class Action Lawsuit is Kelly, et al. v. Coinbase Global, Inc., et al., Case No. 3:21-cv-06010 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California San Francisco Division.
Don’t Miss Out!
Check out our list of Class Action Lawsuits and Class Action Settlements you may qualify to join!
Read About More Class Action Lawsuits & Class Action Settlements:
- Bipartisan Bill to Study Blockchain Technology, Cryptocurrency Passes the House for Second Time
- Judge Rejects Certification in $400M Bitcoin Fraud Class Action
- Coinbase Randomly Locks Users Out of Accounts for Months, Deletes Funds, Class Action Lawsuit Alleges
- Rapper ‘The Game’ Faces Class Action Lawsuit Over Cannabis Crypto Startup
Honda, Hyundai, Kia, Subaru vehicle data collection class action lawsuit investigation
May 17, 2024 | Legal News
168 thoughts onCoinbase Wallets Hacked, Frozen Without Warning, Claims Class Action Lawsuit
After not being able to get into my account with Coinbase, I was just going around in circles. I was repeatedly told that I had to verify my identity. I had to upload a copy of my driver’s license (front and back) and also upload a selfie. I did these things and although I was able to get into the account, most of my cryptocurrency had vanished. I went from approximately $40,000 down to $1,300. Big difference. I contacted them again and was told to again upload my driver’s license and this time take a selfie while holding a sign saying “bitcoin trading” with the date underneath. I received a couple of emails from them, but I didn’t see any willingness to help. All I got was my account was ineligible for review. I don’t think Coinbase will ever try to rectify this problem based on their attitude. Therefore, I have elected to join one of the class action lawsuits currently in California if I can.
I thought Coinbase was solid because I’ve always been able to send money within 30 minutes until the last time. They locked my account for 15 days for no reason meaning I cannot send any money meanwhile the market value of my account is dwindling. I called the rep and they literally said it locks money “randomly”.
I’m getting out of this shithole company asap.
Well, I put $500 usdt in my coinbase wallet and was hacked as soon as I did. I called Coinbase right away. They closed my account and I had to go through the steps to open it up again. I then spoke to several agents and one of said since this is not your fault we will take care of this. This incident happened on March 3rd, 2022. I get a email stating there is nothing they can do. I filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau today March 6, 2022. I would like to see justice for everyone that has been hacked and for Coinbase to be fully liable for their wrong doings.
I got hacked 10 – 15 k. What can I do? Is there an attorney?
I was scammed out $90,000.00
A scam in Coinbase wallet.
My funds were sent to another platform. I went there to withdraw. Said I needed to deposit another 90k to get my original funds back.
My wallet was hacked and $10,000 in USDT was Stolen mid January. Seeking attorney to provide assistance in filing suit
Please let me know if you find someone the same happened to me and because is so little the lawyers doesn’t want to take my case.
I was hacked when someone fraudulently transferred my cell number to another device. They subsequently used my cell number to hack my email and logged into my email, and blocked the Coinbase domain. Without your cell number you cannot get Coinbase on the phone, it is literally impossible. I entered multiple tickets but even after I secured my email I wasn’t receiving any communication from Coinbase and couldn’t get them on the phone. Coinbase is obviously aware of this form of hack because when I finally got my number back and got a human on the phone they knew exactly how to fix my email. Coinbase has said I owe the $1000 that was fraudulently purchased even though I had my bank decline the transaction. I would gladly join a class action to expose and alert others to this failing on the part of Coinbase.
I’m embarrassed to say it but I was also hacked. I met this supposed Asian woman on a dating app called “Hinge” and eventually the conversation moved over to another app called “Signal.” She said that she wanted to build a relationship with me and that she also wanted to help me make a lot of money through mining Ethereum. After talking to her for awhile, she eventually persuaded me to take all my money out of my current investments and put them into my coinbase wallet where I would mine for Ethereum. I also took thousands of dollars out of my bank account and put it all into my coinbase wallet. Only to find out one night (on January 22, 2022) that all of my money (roughly 9k) was taken out of my wallet and sent to some mysterious wallet. And just like many of you, I tried contacted coinbase and so far all they have done is freeze my account. That’s their answer to this… Now I’m assuming I’m never going to get my money back. Which is complete bullshit if you ask me. That said, if anyone else who is reading this is in a similar situation please speak up. The only way coinbase can be held responsible for their negligence is if we all get together and file a lawsuit against them. These hackers who are stealing all this money from innocent people need to be caught and prosecuted! We cannot sit here and let these crooks get away with this!
I had a very similar experience, without the dating stuff on Jan 6, $75k was taken from my wallet, without warning. This was in part do to Coinbase wallet negligence with the token allowance setting…I’ll comment more after re-reading your post
Is there a law firm willing to help us? I found many people on Reddit who had similar experiences. Many mention an Asian women. I was “recruited” my someone who mentions the Asian women he said was his girlfriend, he said he had researched this offer and said it was legit, but I think he was part of the scam
Hey Chris, I’m not sure if there’s a Law firm that would fight for us. But we should definitely look for one. Like you said, if you go on Reddit you can read countless stories of people who have lost all their money in their coinbase wallets. That said, I think if we all rally together and go after coinbase (as a group) maybe, just maybe we can make something happen here. However after doing some research of my own, it appears that coinbase has never reimbursed anyone due to being hacked as they take no responsibility for it. Apparently coinbase wallet is separate from coinbase. I just found this out today. But with so many people being hacked, especially as of late, you would think eventually coinbase would have to take at least some responsibility for this… Btw, I think you’re spot on when it comes to the “token allowance.” This was something I wasn’t aware of until after I lost my 9k. My token allowance had been set so that these hackers could take unlimited amounts of money from my wallet anytime they wanted to. It wasn’t until after I lost my 9k that I changed the allowance setting to “0.” Now you would think this would be something coinbase would emphasize to every single one of their customers before they go ahead and set up an external wallet but I was never made aware of this until I did my own research. Now as a side note, I still had about 4K sitting in the mining pool database that I was using (as of last night) however when I tried to get into the mining pool this morning it appears that the scammers have locked me out so now there’s no chance of me being able to extract any of that money. It’s all gone. Every single penny. This whole situation has completely turned me off to crypto as a whole. Which is really unfortunate.
I lost 90k to this scam.
Coinbase is unresponsive.
Coinbase wallet said I need to de register my wallet.
Had money transferred to another platform and it disappeared.
I had recently bought $125 worth of tether usdt cryptocurrency from Coinbase sent it to my Coinbase wallet had it in for a couple days got it up to $242 worth was going to withdraw funds to take my son to the hospital and when I finally figured out how to do it went back in to wallet and my $242 was gone transferred to some account I didn’t authorize brought it up to Coinbase they made me wait a week before emailing me back telling me they weren’t going to do anything about the unauthorized transaction and my money disappearing instead suggested that maybe my phone was hacked and I should contact FBI my phone wasn’t hacked and I didn’t authorize transaction been trying to figure out how to join a lawsuit against these crooks
My coinbase wallet was just hacked or balance removed. I was mining within my wallet. Is that normal or stupid ? Anyway my wallet stripped and they asking for $40k pledge to get my $10k back – I assume this is a scam and won’t send – but another have anyway of helping me get this money back ?