The Teenager Who Lived a Secret Double Life as a Millionaire Crypto Bandit
In May 2018, Darren Marble was attending a cryptocurrency conference in New York City when he discovered he had become a victim of a new and financially devastating form of crime.
The first sign that something was amiss was when Marble, an executive producer for a streaming series, started having issues with his mobile phone. He couldn’t connect to email, or send a text.
It wasn’t until later that night when he got back to his hotel room, logged into the wifi and investigated further that his worst fears were realized. His crypto wallet had been drained.
“I’d lost $100,000 of cryptocurrency instantaneously,” he said. “I just remember thinking, ‘This can’t be real.’”
Marble called his wife in a panic, feeling a sense of hopelessness and shame as he explained what had happened. The money was gone, he could see it had been transferred into other people’s wallets, but he couldn’t tell who those wallets belonged to, because the whole point of cryptocurrency was its anonymity.
“I just remember having this sinking feeling in my heart. I felt guilty, I felt ashamed, I felt naive, and I felt embarrassed,” he said.
