Acclaimed billionaire investor and Dallas Mavericks owner, Mark Cuban, reportedly lost nearly $900k on a cyber heist targeted at his digital wallets. The misappropriation of Cuban’s digital funds was initially identified by digital sleuth Wazz, who noted suspicious behavior on a digital wallet that Cuban hadn’t used in around five months. Assets such as USD Coin, Tether, and Lido Staked Ether abruptly disappeared from the wallet, all within a short span of 10 minutes.
Following the initial attack, another digital wallet registered under Cuban saw $2 million worth of USDC being transferred to an unknown wallet. Wazz initially thought the Mavericks owner was merely transferring assets elsewhere. In an admission to DL News, Cuban explained that he had accessed his MetaMask wallet for the first time in months. The digital thieves seemed to have capitalized on this movement, indicating that they may have been waiting for him to access his digital wallet.
Following the incident, Cuban confirmed that he had moved all remaining assets to Coinbase Custody. The Dallas Mavericks owner seemingly confirmed that the $2 million USDC transaction was his doing. Some from the crypto community are speculating that Cuban inadvertently signed a malicious transaction or his private key was compromised, causing the hack that led to the direct outflow of funds.
Interestingly, this incident isn’t Cuban’s first run-in with issues in the digital currency world. Earlier in June 2021, he lost an unspecified sum of money when Iron Finance, an algorithmic stablecoin project he invested in, suffered a critical failure and imploded.