A Coinbase Inc. account holder says he spent days trying to reach customer support at the cryptocurrency exchange before he was finally able to get help after hackers took over and drained his account.

By that time, more than $200,000 in cryptocurrency had been siphoned from Manish Aggarwal’s account, his lawyers said in a proposed class-action lawsuit filed Tuesday in federal court in San Francisco.

Coinbase “does a poor job of protecting its user accounts from unlawful intrusion and thievery” and “an even worse job” of helping customers whose accounts are breached, according to the complaint.

Representatives of the San Francisco-based company didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment.

Recursive loop

Instead of connecting Aggarwal to a customer service agent who could have helped him, his lawyers say, the company routed him “through its automated complaint processing -- a recursive loop of impenetrable screens that prevented him from explaining his situation to any human being and was incapable of redressing the theft of his savings.” 

In 49 minutes on April 24, hackers used 6,000 separate transactions to drain $190,000 from Aggarwal’s account, according to the suit.

Aggarwal says Coinbase has refused to refund his lost cryptocurrency. He is suing “to be made whole” and is proposing to represent other Coinbase investors who have suffered similar losses.

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