Hardware wallet for $5 - Don't be fooled!

[Lucius]

In the sea of fraud we see every day, there are some extremely stupid ones like this one, but still, there are people who will think something like this might be true. Only $5 for Ledger Nano S is just to low price, and if you order something like that, most likely you will get nothing, or in the best case, you will get a device with pre-generated seed or tampered hardware.

Too good to be true, 100% scam in most cases.


News Source

[lobat999]

~snip~

OMG! This products must have been imitations only!

If this is true, then maybe Alibaba did some kind of promotional campaign with it but if not, I bet it has a malicious payload embedded on its firmware!

Now I was wondering why Alibaba, being a large and a well respected company, would allow this kinds of products to be listed on their site - assuming those were fake LNS because its clearly a violation of IPR!

I hope sooner or later somebody or someone from the Ledger can verify the authenticity of these products and do appropriate actions accordingly.

Paging Jack Ma....

[NeuroticFish]

It's interesting that you can select the capacity 
I guess that it's a cheap USB stick in a counterfeit Ledger Nano S box. I really hope it's not something more evil.

[DdmrDdmr]

But we're missing out the best part here: if you go to the company profile, we get to see the men at work (not kidding, these photos really belong to the company profile):



and women:



Original alibaba "offer" (warning: cannot be anything else but a scam of some sort):

Code:

https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/100-New-Authentic-Arrival-Ledger-Nano_62013195382.html?spm=a2700.galleryofferlist.0.0.75b7260fNJr1q5&bypass=true

Not the cheapest though. Competitors sell at $0.01-$0.10 / Unit (what they sell is another completely different matter):

Buying any of these would probably turn into the most expensive investment in crypto that you make …

[TryNinja]

Am I the only one curious and thinking about buying one to unbox and see what is that?

Edit: Nevermind, looks like there is a minimum order buy of 50 units. Definitely won't be doing that.

[BitcoinsGreat]

In the sea of fraud we see every day, there are some extremely stupid ones like this one, but still, there are people who will think something like this might be true. Only $5 for Ledger Nano S is just to low price, and if you order something like that, most likely you will get nothing, or in the best case, you will get a device with pre-generated seed or tampered hardware.

Too good to be true, 100% scam in most cases.

Whenever you decided to buy the hardware wallets, never buy them for Ali Baba, Amazon or any third party websites. Only buy from the original manufacturer site like https://shop.ledger.com/ , even if you have to pay a bit extra.

Am I the only one curious and thinking about buying one to unbox and see what is that?
Edit: Nevermind, looks like there is a minimum order buy of 50 units. Definitely won't be doing that.

Why would they want 50 minimum order buy ? So that they can scam at once ? This is ridiculous.

[crairezx20]

No one will fall for this unless if you are a newbie.

Like tryninja said it seems they require a minimum amount of ledger nano before they deliver and you can't seem to order a one piece of this.

Only a newbie can fall for this.

Am I the only one curious and thinking about buying one to unbox and see what is that?

Edit: Nevermind, looks like there is a minimum order buy of 50 units. Definitely won't be doing that.

The Ledger nano with the price of US$0.01-US$0.10 requires a minimum amount before they deliver compared the $5 one posted by Lucius that they allowed buying 1 piece to 50 pieces.

[HCP]

Am I the only one curious and thinking about buying one to unbox and see what is that?

Nope... you're not... I'm seriously tempted, just for shits and giggles to see what $5 gets you.

Kinda like all those tech youtube channels that buy "high end" graphics cards from Wish for like $20

[TryNinja]

The Ledger nano with the price of US$0.01-US$0.10 requires a minimum amount before they deliver compared the $5 one posted by Lucius that they allowed buying 1 piece to 50 pieces.

Yeah, which makes me even more curious. What kind of "Ledger Nano S" would cost 1c - 10c? I'm legit starting to think they are only selling the box (maybe for these who want to scam in bulk).

No way even a flash drive desguised as a Ledger would cost that per unit.

[passwordnow]

No one will fall for this unless if you are a newbie.

Sadly they will. I'll advise some friends of mine about this, thanks for posting this Lucius.

Whenever you decided to buy the hardware wallets, never buy them for Ali Baba, Amazon or any third party websites. Only buy from the original manufacturer site like https://shop.ledger.com/ , even if you have to pay a bit extra.

I always recommend people to buy directly from the manufacturer itself or with verified partners but not with any third party sites like amazon, ebay or alibaba. Someone who's not knowledgeable about a ledger wallet wouldn't notice the capacity. And I'm telling it to others because of the robbery that became popular in the past when a guy ordered it on Amazon IIRC and his funds were gone after storing all of his life savings. I think these that are for sale are simply flash drives.

[LTU_btc]

It's common thing on Chinese online shops, not only when it comes to crypto. If something extremely cheap there, don't even try to order. 99.9% that it will be fake, not working item or something what you didn't odered. But it's good thing that you can open dispute and return your money.

Edit: Nevermind, looks like there is a minimum order buy of 50 units. Definitely won't be doing that.

Yes, because Alibaba is wholesale store for business and you can't buy small number of items there. But probably there is some sellers of fake hardware wallets on Aliexpress too. And yeah, it's very likely that you will get only empty boxes if you will order it.

[leowonderful]

Might just be some sort of placeholder item not intended to be bought to catch peoples' attention as well; if you read the item description, it says that you need to contact the seller from either their WhatsApp or Gmail for more information, and I wouldn't be surprised if this was the case because they also have other listings organized similarly with various storage and RAM options available for products like Amazon Fire TV sticks with the same description and the same MOQ of 50 items.

Either way, it's not legit and it's not worth your time to even contact these guys. Already risky enough to buy hardware wallets from a place that's not from the manufacturer's site, never mind something like this.

[lobat999]

But we're missing out the best part here: if you go to the company profile, we get to see the men at work (not kidding, these photos really belong to the company profile):

I didn't know Ledger Nano S undergoes dyeing first before being made into a final product.

Am I the only one curious and thinking about buying one to unbox and see what is that?

Edit: Nevermind, looks like there is a minimum order buy of 50 units. Definitely won't be doing that.

Actually I'm thinking you're not the only one thinking about buying it, I think these are the possible customers that would likely buy it:

1. gadget shops worldwide (that could resold it for a price at par with the authentic Ledger Nano S)
2. naive customers (who would trade better security for better price)

I think the reason why this kinds of supposedly counterfeit products exist is that there is always a steady demand for them and Governments are doing less action to combat or discourage it or being lenient about it - especially with China, which is well known to produce any kind of counterfeit products!

[LeGaulois]

I would have bought it too, a funny thing: If you read the discussion on Reddit there is a user saying

I too buy my cryptocurrency hardware wallets from a Alibaba vendor who specializes in "cashmere products, Buddhist Ritual items, Woolen Products, Garments, Jewellery". /s

If you check the seller profile on Alibaba you can read

Main Products   
Cashmere products, Buddhist Ritual items, Woolen Products, Garments, Jewellery

Pretty sure it's the same seller. Look like for 5 bucks they really send you something.

[dkbit98]

They are even selling this as original new Ledger Nano S wallet and you can choose capacity
Thimi, Kathmandu, Nepal...

[mk4]

Why would they want 50 minimum order buy ? So that they can scam at once ? This is ridiculous.

It's on Alibaba, which most if not all items are being sold in bulk for reseller businesses worldwide hence the minimum for the lower prices.

With that said, can someone with a healthy bank account purchase some? LOL. Like what are you even going to get? A flash drive with like 128mb memory for you to be able to save a .txt file on it? They even have a 128gb variant. Are you supposed to store movies on it too? lmao. Might look for other similar deals that accepts one item purchases for the lulz.

[JeotQ]

The picture used is not real and the price is too good to be real, i think internet novice are the ones who can fall for this, hardware wallets are more costly and i do not trust alibaba websites for purchasing items

[Lucius]

But we're missing out the best part here: if you go to the company profile, we get to see the men at work (not kidding, these photos really belong to the company profile):

Not the cheapest though. Competitors sell at $0.01-$0.10 / Unit (what they sell is another completely different matter):

I also saw those pictures, but maybe they even put some fake pictures on their profile, in any case it is obvious that this is a shady business. I see some members thinking to order this $5 hardware wallet just to see what they will get, but in most cases the customer gets nothing, or the package contains something else of very little or no value.

I am not sure if it is financially viable to produce even false hardware wallets and sell them at such a low price. They would be more successful selling them at $20 or $30 per piece. And speaking of low prices, there are still some twenty days to go until the Black Friday discounts, very likely the Ledger Nano S will be available at a very good price.

[TryNinja]

This are scammers and hackers trying to steal people's funds. And I'm sure the seeds are pregenerated on the device

There is no device. They obviously don’t have 50+ devices worth $60 each to sell for $5 (per sell) just for the sake of putting a pregenerated seed. That’s nuts. Anyone would buy them, do a clean wipe and sell for $40 or so each.