According to CoinMeta, Ronald Spektor, a resident of Brooklyn, was sentenced to 12 years in prison for admitting to defrauding nearly 100 Coinbase users of about 16 million US dollars. Eric Gonzalez, the district attorney for New York, stated that Spektor carried out phishing and social engineering scams over a period of more than a year, deceiving victims into believing that their accounts had been hacked and urging them to transfer funds to accounts under his control. Social engineering fraud has become a major threat in the crypto sector in 2025 and has become even more severe this year. WhiteBit reported that nearly 41% of crypto security incidents last year involved fraudsters deceiving victims. The prosecutor's office also ordered Spektor to forfeit cash, cryptocurrencies, and personal property estimated to be over 500,000 US dollars, as well as to compensate nearly 16 million US dollars.