American musician Garret Dutton, known as G. Love, reported losing approximately $420,000 in Bitcoin, equivalent to about Rs. 3.9 crore, after downloading what he believed was the legitimate Ledger Live app from the App Store. The application was fraudulent, and upon entering his recovery phrase, he immediately lost 5.9 BTC. Dutton stated he had been building this Bitcoin reserve for his future financial security.
An update was added on April 14 at 10:30 a.m., including a comment from Ledger’s chief technology officer, Charles Guillemet.
Blockchain investigator ZachXBT responded to Dutton’s social media post, revealing that the stolen 5.9 BTC had been funneled through KuCoin deposit addresses in nine separate transactions. ZachXBT further noted that KuCoin faces persistent issues with unauthorized services exploiting user accounts, which the platform’s compliance team has failed to address effectively.
This incident echoes a previous scam in 2023, where ZachXBT highlighted a counterfeit Ledger app on the Microsoft Store that resulted in the theft of 16.8 BTC, valued at around $588,000 or Rs. 5.4 crore at the time. Victims were misled into thinking they were using Ledger Live Web3, a interface for managing offline cryptocurrency storage via Ledger hardware devices.
According to DeFiLlama data, cryptocurrency-related hacks and thefts amounted to $453 million, or roughly Rs. 3,770 crore, in the first quarter of 2024, underscoring the ongoing risks in the sector. Dutton’s experience serves as a stark reminder of the need for enhanced on-chain protections, stricter rules for decentralized finance systems, and greater public education on digital asset safety.
In a statement to Gadgets 360, Ledger CTO Charles Guillemet emphasized: ‘Ledger will never request your 24-word recovery phrase. If any person or application asks for it, consider it suspicious. We regularly advise our users on this. You cannot fully trust your surrounding software environment, including browsers, app stores, or computers. Threats can appear on official platforms. The best safeguard is storing private keys on a secure hardware device with its own display, such as a Ledger wallet, and never inputting your recovery phrase into any software or site. Those 24 words control your assets.’
This event underscores the necessity for improved monitoring by platforms and increased vigilance among users, as even knowledgeable individuals can become targets of sophisticated scams in the evolving cryptocurrency environment.
Cryptocurrency remains an unregulated form of digital money, not recognized as legal tender, and carries inherent market risks. The details in this report are not meant as financial, trading, or any other form of guidance or endorsement by NDTV. NDTV accepts no liability for losses from investments based on any interpreted advice, prediction, or information herein.
