Singapore police: tampered Ledger wallets cost users $2.7M

Singapore police say tampered Ledger hardware wallets bought from local retailers have cost users about 3.5 million Singapore dollars ($2.7 million) across at least two cases, the first reported on Sept. 10, Cointelegraph reported. That puts the earliest local complaint almost a month before the wider implant scandal surfaced.

What police found

In an advisory published on Wednesday, the Singapore Police Force said preliminary investigations had found malicious hardware components inside Ledger wallets purchased from some retail stores in the city-state. Police say they are in contact with Ledger, which is reviewing the affected cases, and that investigations are continuing.

The figure adds a concrete local loss total to an incident that so far had been told mostly through individual victims and blockchain tracing, such as the scammer who lost $4.8 million to rigged devices.

Another user has said a tampered device came from local IT retailer Challenger and that Ledger later sent him a replacement. The pattern is the same throughout: the device looked genuine, but extra hardware inside could leak secrets. Karpelès has argued Ledger's early implant warnings deserved more action.

How to protect yourself

• Buy hardware wallets directly from the manufacturer or a reseller listed on its site, and treat airport and marketplace stock with suspicion.
• Never use a device that arrives with a pre-filled recovery phrase or a broken seal.
• Run the maker's genuineness check before loading funds; our step-by-step guide on how to check if a hardware wallet is genuine covers Ledger, Trezor and others.
• If you already use a device bought from a suspended retailer, consider moving funds to a new wallet with a fresh recovery phrase.