American musician Garrett Dutton, the lead singer of G.Love & Special Sauce, has lost his retirement funding (5.92 Bitcoin worth about $424,000 at the time of writing) to a fake Ledger app downloaded from Apple’s App Store.
Fake Ledger app makes away with ~$6 BTC
As Dutton narrates, his crypto coins disappeared the moment he entered his 24-word seed phrase into the app.
The application somehow bypassed Apple’s marketed vigorous checks and was listed as legit, despite being misspelled as “LeddgerLĭve.”
Source: X
Desperate, the musician appealed to the X community for help in tracing and possibly recovering his funds.
On-chain investigator ZachXBT took on the case and revealed that the money had been laundered on KuCoin through 9 different addresses.
Sadly, ZachXBT notes that freezing or recovering the funds was nearly impossible due to the exchange’s ill repute regarding criminally associated funds. Here, he noted that the exchange lost its EU MiCA regulatory license in February 2026, just 3 months after obtaining it, due to compliance issues.
Reactions to the incident
In response to the incident, Ledger reminded its clients that its legit apps are only available on Ledger.com. The hardware wallet provider added that it would continue to monitor the situation while posting updates on its awareness page.
Meanwhile, Apple has yet to issue a statement on the matter, despite community outreach. Responses on X saw an outraged client base who thought everything on the App Store was authentic and verifiable.
Most of all, reactions reprimanded anyone entering their hard wallet seed phrase on any internet-connected device, saying it defies the whole logic of having a cold wallet.
Earlier this month, law enforcement agencies concluded the week-long Operation Atlantic, dismantling a $45 million crypto fraud network. The group used fake investment dashboards alongside phishing notifications to scam their unwitting victims. The agents busted similar groups in January and February, collectively accounting for billions of dollars in losses.
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