Gene Duckett said he received a call from someone claiming to work for Ledger.
The person on the other end of the line immediately played on the urgency of the situation.
“My name is Benjamin. I'm from Ledger, and your funds are at risk of being stolen.”
The caller directed the victim to a website where he could supposedly secure his funds.
“They told me they needed to give me a security code so that when they called me back, I would know it was the right person.”
When a second person who knew the security code called him, the victim felt confident and entered his seed phrase on the website in question.
After entering his information, the victim received a call from a third party who told him there was a problem.
“As soon as he said that, I saw that all the funds in there were gone.”
The scammer then hung up, and the victim realized that their funds had been stolen.
“It was worth $1,038,000. That's a considerable amount of money.”
The victim described the emotional impact of the theft, explaining that her dog could sense her despair that night.
“I really blamed myself for it.”
But this victim is not alone. In 2024, the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center received nearly 150,000 complaints of crypto fraud, representing a total loss of $9.3 billion.
“This is a real global emergency,” said Eithan Raviv, CEO of cybersecurity company Lionsgate Network.
