Cold wallets are considered by the blockchain ecosystem to be the safest and most recommended cryptocurrencies storage format. However, this does not mean that these hardware devices are foolproof, as human error can expose our savings to the most unscrupulous hands. This is what happened to a man in the UK, who acquired a cold wallet on Ebay altered by a third party, losing his life savings.

The complaint was made by the user moodyrocket directly from Reddit, where he describes that he had recently acquired a Ledger Nano portfolio where he had stored more than £25,000 in XRP, Litecoin and Dash format.

The cold wallet had not been used for a week, but when the user checked his accounts one morning he realized that his savings were at zero and had been transferred to another address the same day at 7:30 am. Moodyrocket's investment was equivalent to 34 thousand dollars, a figure that represented the savings of his life.

"I haven't used my Ledger in a week, today I decided to check the value of my XRP, Litecoin and Dash just to find out that they all looked like zero and had been transferred to another location the same day at 7:30 p. m. I'm not sure how this is possible, as I haven't had access to my Ledger in a week. I don't know what to do, as the total value is over £25000, has been stolen by coin or is something else. I'm lost here and now I feel so physically ill. Somebody, please help."

At first the man did not know how his money had been exposed to the hands of a thief. But after some inquiries, he began to suspect that the device was not defective, but had been altered. The scam was orchestrated, the cold wallet had been acquired from a third party who offered it through Ebay, a seller who had randomly assigned the device to keep his client's money.

Thus, the user found that the recovery key - which had to be generated by the device - had been exposed by the vendor long before the device was offered. The fraudster would have been able to trick the client into handing him a fraudulent document that supposedly securely verified the recovery key, but that in the end was proof that the security of the cold wallet had been breached.

The event created a great stir in the social network, touching many other users and promoting solidarity among community members. The CEO of the firm Ledger Nano S was one of many users who contacted the victim to verify the losses and advise him:

"We will contact you privately at moodyrocket and assist you in filing a police complaint against the seller. Please contact us directly by private message with your email address. We will put you in touch with our general counsel so that we can help you file a formal criminal complaint and bring the eBay seller to justice."

Ledger's CTO, dubbed btchip in Reddit, was also aware of the user's situation, advising him to report the case to the police.

A number of network users also recommended avoiding acquiring hardware portfolios at auctions or from non-manufacturing merchants, as in some cases resellers of coin purse systems may lend themselves to this type of device intervention.

Cold portfolios, however considered the safest tools for storing cryptographic coins, also have their flaws in the field of financial security and not only because of human error. Recently, a ConsenSys associate would have highlighted a group of vulnerabilities that the Nano and Trezor purse possessed in their designs, elements that jeopardized the savings of their customers. These and other experiences show that there is still no foolproof way to safeguard cryptographic investments.