Redditor Loses $34,000 After Buying a Hardware Wallet through eBay
Never buy hardware wallets from third parties. You can never fully know whether they've been tampered with or not.
Just today, someone posted on r/ledgerwallet about roughly $34,000 mysteriously vanishing from their Ledger Nano S.
I have not used my Ledger in a week, today I decide to check the value of my XRP, Litecoin and Dash only to discover that all of them showed up as zero and had been transferred somewhere else yesterday all around the same time at 7:30pm. I am not sure how this is possible as I have not access my Ledger in a week. I do not know what do to as the total value is over £25000, has by currency been stolen or is it something else? I am at a lost here and right now feel so physical sick. Some please help.
And further in the comments:
The Ledger came with a recovery sheet which had a 24 word recovery seed, to see the seed I had to scratch off the silver foil/paint that was covering it.
!!!!!! Ledgers DO NOT come with a recovery sheet !!!!!!
You must ALWAYS generate your 24 word recovery seed on the spot!
When you get a Ledger Nano S (or any hardware wallet for that matter), you generate a 24 word seed phrase on the device that you must write down and store somewhere safe. This seed phrase is used in case you ever need to recover your wallet. It looks like our thief bought a Ledger Nano S, generated the seed phrase, then printed the seed phrase on a scratch-it card and mailed it to the buyer along with the device. The buyer mistook this scratch-it card for an official "recovery sheet" and started using the Ledger with the compromised seed phrase. The thief would then have no trouble using the seed phrase to access the buyer's wallet.
The user would have been fine if they reset the seed phrase again before using the Ledger Nano S. But it's too easy to be duped by official looking documentation.
The CEO of Ledger Wallet responded to OP's post, asking them to reach out so that they can help file a criminal complaint to track down the thief. Hopefully that leads somewhere.
Please buy your hardware wallets directly from the source. I almost made this mistake when I found cheaper deals on Amazon. But this is your money, and crypto is still a very young space where in most cases it is impossible to recover your funds if they are stolen. Remember John Hammond's advice.
Sources / Further Readings
https://np.reddit.com/r/ledgerwallet/comments/7obot7/all_my_cryptocurrency_stolen
Image 1: https://imgur.com/DsICkge
Image 2: http://www.quickmeme.com/meme/3to3sm
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Join the challenge simply by tagging your post #challenge30days. It's not too late to hop on board. But once you start, you can't quit!
January 30 Days Writing Challenge
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So if he would have been fine just making his own seed phrase, then why not buy from amazon? Or is something else going on where you would be better off buying from the source?
Hindsight is 20/20, in this case he would have been fine making his own seed phrase. But who knows what else thieves have come up with. Not worth the cheaper price to buy secondhand.
Yeah you are right. Even though it's a presale until march , I would rather buy from the source to be sure.
$30,000!!!! Big money ! So irresponsible
$34,000! I had originally incorrectly converted 25,000 British pounds. Just made the correction. Even sadder :(
Lol . Better luck next time. Take care