Being a professional gamer is not as easy as you think. Not only they have to spend several hours daily training, the kind of attention that they attract is sometimes unwanted. A recent case saw a League of Legends superstar lose $200,000 USD in cryptocurrencies directly from his Coinbase account.

Yiliang “Doublelift” Peng has awoken in a morning and his bank had sent him messages telling him that he had overdrawn on his account. Peng states that a couple of weeks before the theft, he was the victim of SIM swapping. He had experienced some abnormal activity on his cell phone coverage and now believes that this could have been part of the hacker’s plans.

SIM swapping is a tactic that is used to fool carrier employees into giving the access of a victim’s phone number to the attacker. Peng’s mobile provider confirmed the number had been reported as lost or stolen and then the attackers got access to it. This way, he got access to his email and his Coinbase account.

Coinbase uses the mobile phone confirmation as part of a two-factor authentication and the scammer was able to access the account. He used an intricate system of email filters to prevent Peng from even realizing that he was being hacked by these people.

All the transaction confirmations that were sent to the inbox of the gamer were forwarded directly to a hidden email address and the emails were deleted from the original inbox. The process was so quick that Doublelift never even got suspicious about his Coinbase activity.

This intricate heist is just the latest of many that are happening lately in which many victims are conned out of their cryptos. Last month, a Finnish millionaire lost $25 million USSD in an illegitimate crypto investment, so you have to be careful when investing your cryptos.

While the gamer is confident that he will be able to get his money back, it is unnerving that scammers can access the accounts so easily and effortlessly.

You should always use two factor authentication but remember that, if you notice any unusual activity, you should speak to your carrier as soon as possible to prevent SIM swapping scams.