Bitcoin Forum

Good morning

I have hold crypto on my nano s ledger since 2017. I have not validated a transaction since 2019 and I noticed a few days ago that my seed ledger was emptied.

Between 2019 and 2023 I had health problems, so I abandoned crypto and my computer.

My ETH, LTC and Dogecoin were stolen.


I contacted Ledger and there is nothing they can do. They told me to file a complaint.

I followed the ETH on etherscan and it happened on an unknown wallet then it was transferred to Binance immediately. I contacted Binance and they told me the account is under surveillance but it won't let me communicate with the person. They told me to lose complaint too.

I read on Google that people managed to communicate via a chat on etherscan with thieves. I created an account but couldn't find the chat function.

I'm French, sorry if my English is bad

It looks the funds were moved in the year 2022 and now we are in 2024 that mean's it's gone buddy.

If we are talking about something that happened recently like a day or two but two years means it's long gone and these steps don't make any difference.

But I wonder why the user who got access to your wallet waited so long to drain the wallet.

Because you said you didn't access it since 2019 while the wallet drain happened in 2022.

It's quite a bad experience, for which I would like to say, 'sorry for your loss.' Observing the time frame when those transactions occurred, it's evident that you weren't active at that time, suggesting that someone else close to you may have tampered with your wallet during that period.

What surprises me now is why the person behind this hasn't spent the funds since 2022. The whole story seems a little shaky. As none of us here work with Binance, it's best to follow their instructions while they monitor the current holding wallet.

only thing you can do is what binance told you: file a police report.
they won't interfere without it.
but... good luck getting the cops to do actual work on this.
about binance, you should ask them if your hacker has funds on their platform. if so, insist that they block the person's account... because if he/she withdraws, well your funds are gone.
care to share the addy of your hacker? maybe we can find something.
As for etherscan, you got two options. you can leave a comment under the address or you can send the hacker a tx with a message in it. just google how to do that. a search like "how to send a message in a blockchain transaction" should get you some results. but the odds of him/her reading that message are low. another thing you can do is send a token to him, one with a name that will get his attention, something like "SENDMONEYBACKPLEASE". again, look up how to create a token, it's not that hard

There is a time interval between each transaction. If your wallet is hacked, the hacker will try to empty it quickly, as it reduces the possibility of you paying attention to your wallet and trying to RBF old transactions before confirming them. Therefore, I think that someone knew your wallet seed, whether it was your friend or a relative.

Fill in the police information and ask them to contact Binance to disclose the owner of the account, it may be someone you know.

Sorry to hear about your loss!

It's been two years since your wallet was emptied by a hacker and unfortunately, there's nothing that can be done now.. The only option left for you now is to file a police complaint and let them look into this theft. I doubt you will be able to get back the cryptocurrencies even if the police can track the hacker. The problem with a ledger wallet is that somehow these hackers can get access to your wallet through the backup seed phrases even if you have only once connected your wallet to the internet. You are not alone who has come across such a theft, if you do a Google search you will find a lot of articles about it. There was a time when everyone used to buy and recommend ledger wallets as of now it is not recommended anymore.

Ever since the forum had observed that there is no privacy with the use of ledger hardware wallet, whereby their source code has been a close one, it have been very difficult for you to see someone of reputable member of this forum recommending this same ledger wallet for use because of its privacy being compromised, so going by your experience, we may not have to have any reason in doubting about what you have already said knowing well that this is all we have already suspected about them and they cannot be trusted in that regard of being an open source anymore.

You funds are gone and you can't do anything to recover those funds now. That's why I never suggest anyone to go with Hardware wallets because I find them of no use and anyone who thinks their funds are safe in those wallets should re-think about that.

I'm sorry OP, it has been two years when your funds are gone and it's literally impossible to do anything now. Even if your funds where stolen a few days ago it would still be close to impossible to recover the funds again unless the scammer would return those, but that's not possible at all because the scammers don't care about others, they only care about themselves.

Did anyone know your PIN or your seed or the locations of where to find one or the other?
Who else has access to your computer you used to connect your Ledger wallet to?
Did you ever enter your seed somewhere online or store it in a digital medium?

The timeline of the transactions is unusual. Your dogecoin was transferred out on 4 Jan. Then, the thief took a break until the next morning when the Litecoin was moved. They then took another break of 6 hours before moving some more coins. It's very weird. Normally, a thief would look to take everything at once. But here, more than 24 hours passed between the first and last transaction that is visible on the screenshot.

Are you for real mate? Hardware wallets are indeed very safe but if you fail to adhere to simple healthy wallet practices, you could lose your funds. I quite understand the security risks involved in using a ledger hardware device, but since op didn't give us much info it could be that he stored his seed phrase electronically and that's how his funds was stolen or he bought the hardware device from an unauthorized dealer.

Thank you for your answers. I also think the police won't do anything and I won't be able to get anything back.

Which secure BTC Wallet do you recommend for me to hold?

I heard about 25th words of 100 characters and multi sign.

I thought about Tails live USB which has electrum in wallet.

Not only that, but the same Ethereum address was used to withdrawal ETH and Livepeer token. The same thing happened to Dogecoin, so I do not think that hacker has a deep knowledge about cryptocurrencies and I am sure that will use his personal data to create a Binance account.

It's quite unfortunate that you had health issues which made you abandon crypto for while, I personally believe that your long absence from your ledger and your computer must have been the reason your crypto was stolen.
And if this doesnt really bother you, I would advice you check with your family members, or just about anyone who had access to your computer and possibly knew where you kept your ledger, this is because, a thief from outside can't possibly get hold of your ledger private keys or seed phrase without you giving the consent either by connecting to a malicious app and signing a transaction there, or by you typing your private key or seed phrase into a phishing site.

If you asked me, I did say that some one very close to you did this to you while you were away,  absent minded in the hospital maybe.
And from the screenshot you shared, those coins were moved far back 2022, this is 2 years ago, you taking steps to recover the funds now or to catch the thief is no longer feasible if you ask me, if possible, I would advice you just move on, even though I understand this must be very difficult for you, but you have no other choice other than to just move on.

Hardware wallet is still the best. The problem is not the wallet you are using but rather the device which you connected your hardware wallet is probably infected by a malware. No wallet can escape with that kind of security threat so make sure to have a device with proper security before you start creating any wallet or else you will suffer the same fate.

It’s just hard to believe that hardware wallet can be hacked via online attack unless you giveaway the seedphrase and pin code of your hardware wallet

Reading your first posts and the response from others, I am sure you exposed your seed and someone stole the funds. It must be someone who is close to you and he did not have good experience. He discovered different wallets and moved the funds. Sorry for you loss.

It still a hardware wallet. I do not recommend ledger anymore.There are many other companies who are popular. Buy one that is convenient for you. But most importantly, do not type any of the seed on a digital device. Take a pen and paper or punch the letters on a metal sheet to make the seed fireproof but never write it in a digital device which has internet connection.

Yes, I'm real for sure mate, I will say once again that I don't recommend hardware wallets and neither I use those myself. I believe open-source software wallets like Electrum are 10x better than hardware wallets.

Surely! As soon as they need taxes, they are right there, but when looking for stolen cryptocurrencies, they can’t do anything. :)

Contact them anyway. Let them work off their salary, which they receive from your taxes. :)

It will not be too easy to answer your question in a nutshell. Better take a look at this section Hardware wallets (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=261.0) and read the discussions about various hardware wallets yourself.

The 25th word is mentioned in the Trezor’s blog (https://blog.trezor.io/seed-pin-passphrase-e15d14a0b546). By the way, you can pay attention to their hardware wallets.

Having a hardware wallet will still be a more reliable solution. You can combine "Tails live USB which has electrum in wallet" + hardware wallet.

you still haven't told us the addy of your hacker

But but, wait.

Why are you covering the addresses? You should only cover the one that is yours not the one your funds was moved into, are you even saying the truth?

Let everyone knows the address that hacker moved the money into, maybe it is an exchange address, it is true that you can't get the lost asset back but why cover the address that is not yours? Sorry to say I am just too curious about everything this days.

Depends on how much you are decided to keep in that wallet, based on the previous portfolio value you are holding thousands of dollars worth of crypto which definitely needs the ultimate security available, as others said hardware wallet is an option but since you already had bitter experience then I suggest try cold storage, install the electrum wallet on a completely air-gapped device.

Cold Storage on Electrum (https://electrum.readthedocs.io/en/latest/coldstorage.html)


It's passphrase, a custom seedword to create an entirely different set of private keys and addresses.

It is good though but still cold storage is the better of all.

Hardware wallets are the best. Unauthorized access to your Ledger device with weak PIN or seed phrase seems to be primary leak. So sorry for your loss. This could serve a good example for storing your wallet|seed phrase secure! And what a person could do in a situation like this? Suppose one gets injured and hospitalized. How you going to secure your assets then?

None, until you learn to do it right. You should at least try to narrow down what went wrong with your Ledger wallet and what resulted in you losing the coins you stored there. Ledger is no longer a recommended hardware wallet, but for other reasons that have nothing to do with this case of yours. No hardware wallet will help you if you have no idea what you are doing or how to protect yourself online.

But if you want to buy a different one, tell us how much you would like to invest in one? Some hardware wallets cost under $100, others more than $200. How much are you looking to spend on one?

A hot software wallet will never be as safe as a good hardware wallet. Electrum in a cold storage environment is excellent, but using it as a hot wallet puts your keys online at all times. If you do that, you should at least have it installed on a computer you don't use for anything else.

They should always be secure regardless of your health situation. If people can get hold of your keys when you are gone for a while then you haven't secured them enough or you have surrounded yourself with the wrong people.

That's a big gap, you shouldn't have abandoned your crypto, at least. Since you said they were stored in a hardware wallet, I don't see what your computer had to do with that. Were you keeping your keys and phrases on your computer? And was your computer accessible to anyone else apart from you?

I don't know but if your computer was kept in a place where anyone could access it and it didn't have any unlock password, etc., then I believe someone might have accessed your computer, and stolen the keys, and then stolen your cryptocurrencies using the seed phrase and the password if you had them stored in your computer.

Seed phrases and private keys are supposed to kept in places where no one can have any access to them.

I think this is considered a loss already, meaning that someone gets your seed phrase online or you leave your seed phrase in just with your paper included into your nano s ledger, most of the hard wallet have their at least two or three copies of paper which you will put the seed phrase of your account, this is the reason too why always keep an eye check at least a twice a month or day even though we are using hardware wallet still there's a possible unexpected occurrence. Seems like the binance or police report doesn't have a deal with the concern, the binance will just possibly block the account seems the hacker already withdrew the funds, and the police will just have a blotter just for documentation. This could be a charge to experience, sorry for your loss.

That's rubbish and anyone who has even the slightest notion of security knows it. Cases like this are very rare and are usually due to seed theft and the like. The last case I remember similar to this on a Spanish forum, the OP ended up admitting that he saved a photo of the seeds he had written on his paper on his iCloud Drive. So it's not a failure of the HW but a human failure to expose his seeds.

what a regrettable loss. But OP must have made a mistake in saving his wallet recovery seed. Moreover, looking at the time the transaction was made, it could be someone close to him or someone who doesn't know crypto or is new to crypto.
Just look, there is quite a lag in transaction time, something quite strange happens when a thief carries out his usual actions in crypto. It's possible that the thief knows OP's condition. and if the transaction really goes to Binance, I think Binance can definitely take action.

What still bugs me is how come OP lost his funds if it were stored on a ledger ?
A passcode is needed to access the funds on a ledger right, then how come someone stole the funds.
May be someone had the access to the wallets seed phrase and the possibility of that happening is high if he stored it on his computer.
May be OP's circle is not so good and someone from his circle got hold of his seed phrase and emptied the wallet.

That could be a possibility. But I doubt that the Binance accounr will be disclose without much permission or strong evidence cause this is a huge accusation if proven wrong in the end.

But with the OP's case Id think he isnt hack by someone random due to circumstances. It could be his colleague that might compromise him probably. Cant cal that a friend if someone he knew did that to him.

I think you gave him the best possible answer, now the only question is whether he will understand and listen to your advice. If we exclude some problematic hardware wallets, then in general we can say that the weakest links in the security chain are still people who do not understand that the most common attack vector is their backup, not the device itself.

No matter what HW he buys, the same thing will happen to him if he doesn't keep a backup, PIN or any other important information in a safe way - which means completely offline and away from other people's eyes, including those he trusts.

If you want us not to see an Address.  Then do not cover only the last few characters of it.

I could go to a random Ethereum Block Explorer and insert all the Uncensored characters, it will search all the known used Addresses and I will likely find the one from the image within seconds.  Particularly considering there are exact amounts of Ethereum shown too.

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I believe it is not the fault of Ledger too.  I hate their Hardware Wallet very much but I doubt this was a case of Ledger robbing you.  Sit down and think it very thoroughly.  Where was the Seed placed.  Who saw it or could have seen it.  Who could of had access to your Ledger.

Maybe intentionally set up a similar environment with a more negligible amount of Money in it and check whether it is some body from your inner circle of friends or family doing it.

Let's face it your money was gone, there was no way to return it for sure, and this happened in 2022 right so probably your money was already spent by the thief.

Ledger surely is secured by for sure this was some limitation, since you have health problems already you should have intrusted it already to someone that you already trust, I mean it's your money, but you abandoned your computer with thousands of dollars, that includes your hardware wallet right, he got access with your wallet so he probably got your ledger, I mean there was nothing to blame since you got robbed but you should have the precautions on it if you know you have money on it, I mean it's like abandoning your wallet in a place that wasn't secured.

You might be able to file a complain about this, I mean all of the transactions are going to be traced but it is going to take a lot of your time for sure, and in my opinion, the best you could do here is probably block some of the accounts of the hacker, I mean you mention Binance, it was centralized so with enough evidence you might know the identity of the hacker if you're going to be persistent, but even so it was only a very low chance that you money will be back, Binances users are around the world if you're going to file a case and its on the different country it might not be worth it at all, just move on in my opinion because there was probably nothing that you could actually do.

You can use the best wallet in the world and still lose your coins if you don't protect seed words correctly, but best wallet should be with Open Source code.
There are plenty of option to choose depending of what coins you want to hold.
Best option for newbies is using open source hardware wallet with additional passphrase for better security.

Don't experiment and don't make things to complicated.
Multisig setup should only be used by experts or advanced users, and it is increasing transaction fees.
It is even easier to lose your coins if you don't do multisig correctly.

This is solid option, but it's not for newbies.

The Tails of Linux distribution on USB is considered the same idea as creating a hardware wallet but at a lower cost. Frankly, I think using a hardware wallet will be faster and more efficient in terms of usage. But the decision is up to you in the end. The Electrum wallet is among the best and most famous open-source Bitcoin wallets. Still, the risk of draining or theft of funds may occur in any wallet, whether cold or hot. This may be due to your negligence in securing the backup phrase for your wallet, or the PIN code, or any of the other additional security methods, or not activating two-factor authentication, and your negligence in protecting and fortifying your device from trojans and viruses or connecting your hardware wallet through WalletConnect to any unknown or untrusted DApp are also potential risks.

Therefore, I agree that before using any wallet, you need to know and understand security and protection measures first so that you can hodl your assets in the wallet safely away from scammers. Also, you've gained experience from the previous painful lesson, and I hope that you'll be able to protect your assets, wallets, and devices safely in the future.

Sorry dear, I can feel how bad it feels regaining your health and finding out your asset coins are gone. Even took those measures and yet there was no remedy to recover your funds. 😏.
I also heard that transactions can be tracked through the public ledgere but I've no details about it.
While I've followed your thread up to date that there had been no good news, I think the fund is gone and I don't know also think if there was any necessity of trying to communicate with the scammer because whoever that's responsible for that theft would never return it back to you. So the Only recovery option was if the network online desk was to come in for it.

OP, Very disappointing indeed. It is very unfortunate when you come after a long time and find that you don't have money in your wallet. Since your wallet has been hacked by hackers and it's complicated to get your money back, I don't think it's possible to get it back. You should have watched your crypto from the start. To prevent such incidents from happening later, you may want to consider using a hardware wallet. Staying informed by regularly updating your security practices will help protect your assets in the future. Hackers are always looking for opportunities, we create opportunity of them, so you don't have to make a second time mistake to keep your cryptocurrency safe.

Crypto transactions can't be recovered if they have been sent already and much worse if it's gone through an exchange because the hacker have already withdrawn that.

Your seed cannot be emptied. It's possible that the source where you've purchased it that your seed were pre-seeded/generated already.

What? Is this even possible? Every new hardware wallet came emptied, and every first users are the one to generate new wallet seed, I haven't used Ledger wallet before but I have the same experience running Trezor and Keystone..

Normally Ledger is bad hardware wallet, because they are closed source and many bad things have happened in the past concerning Ledger wallet, I will never advice anyone close to me to buy this hardware wallet.

OP I am sorry for your loss, there is no way to get your assets back and it is not too late to start again, this time you can decide to do it better, go for an open-source hardware wallet, better if it's air-gapped too.

Let it go, do not chase your loss and do not listen to anyone that can promise to help you get it back, it is all gone, some strangers are even using this as a scamming tactics to scam peoole who aren't ready to let go of what theyve lost, don't be a victim.

About the pre-seeded, it's possible that if ever someone purchases it with a third party and not directly from the manufacturer. The first/second owner have generated it and will write it down for the fake convenience of the buyer.

And the buyer that has lack of idea of what they've done will not generate new seed but instead will use the preloaded/preseeded recovery phrases.

Before they're good but now, we all agree with that.