FAKE “COINBASE” TEXTS LED TO THE THEFT OF 33.7 BTC FROM A BOSTON TRUST AND ITS BENEFICIARY IN 2023 — AGENTS TRACED 11.2 BTC TO A BINANCE ACCOUNT OPENED WITH A FAKE ID — IT BECAME MONERO — BINANCE SENT 110,270 USDT INSTEAD — PROSECUTORS SUE TO KEEP IT

A civil forfeiture complaint filed in federal court in Massachusetts on September 28, 2026 lays out a theft from June 2023. On June 1 and 2 that year, a beneficiary of a Boston family trust got text messages "purportedly from 'Coinbase'" and gave up a login and password. The trust's wallet and the beneficiary's own sat under one Coinbase account. Together they held 33.7 BTC, "valued then at approximately $900,000."

Agents traced 11.2 BTC to a Binance account opened in late May 2023 with an ID number that is "unassigned and is therefore fraudulent." There the bitcoin was converted to Monero. Binance froze the account at the FBI's request while it held about 758.55 XMR. On August 3, 2026, Binance sent the government about 110,270 USDT "in lieu of the XMR." The complaint does not say where the other 22.5 BTC went.

No one is charged. The government is suing the money itself, and the money is a Tether balance swapped in for coins it never held. The Justice Department's own release values it at "approximately $47,000," which does not square with 110,270 dollar-pegged tokens.

Nothing was broken to take these coins. A text got a password, and a password was enough, because the keys sat with Coinbase. Holding your own keys moves the target to your seed phrase, and no real company will ever text you asking for it. At the time of this writing, bitcoin was $84,143.