My hardware wallet was seized by US customs.

[Oasisman]

Thanks for all the comments and suggestions, and this is what I believe happened.

The wallet was sent P2p, and not from a recognised supplier. I suspect this raised a red flag, and customs decided to investigate. The local depot didn't have the resources for this, so they sent it away for analysis. The bankers virus probably slowed down this process, which is why it ended up taking 4 months to deliver. I understand that it is easy to send Bitcoin via the blockchain, but this leaves a permanent record. Using a loaded wallet for a money transfer is closer to a cash payment, and doesn't leave any record of the transaction.

Interesting, that's the most probable scenario that happened in the customs. But, it would be nice for them to repack things up since they haven't found anything critically suspicious on the package. Though it raises a red flag, but It's sure have undergone meticulous process before you recieved the package right?

Maybe wallets with viewable balances, but secure withdrawals will become the cash of the future.

I haven't tried using hardware wallet as well, but base on this story, I have just learned that such scenario is very possible to happen not only for you, but for anyone else in the future including me. So, I agree with this initiative.

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[Juggy777]

The wallet is a keep key...  I'll start a review thread, and tell people what I think about the concept, and its ease of use for digital nomads.At the moment I've got mildly positive opinions, and I hope that will be justified.

I don't want to ruin your fun with a new device, but KeepKey it is not something that has made many people happy. I've never used it personally, so I can't speak from personal experience, but from everything I've read so far I haven't found too many satisfied users. Maybe your personal experience will be different because you haven't used any other hardware wallet so far so you can't make a comparison.

Yes, the Keepkey is a worthless black bricklet

@Jet Cash there’s an article from December 2019 which says that Kraken easily cracked Keep Key wallet, though I’m assuming that this bug should have been fixed by now. Also I’ll agree with what @Lucius has said, and I too would recommend you to try another hardware wallet, as keep key wallet is not worth the hassle.

Source:

https://www.coinspeaker.com/kraken-cracked-keepkey-hardware-wallet-extracted-seed-mnemonic-phrase/

[Wind_FURY]

What competition? By Trezor/Ledger? I would be suspicious if it wasn't by the manufacturer.
Assume that wallet is compromised. Throw it away.

The wallet is a keep key...

If it was a newbie I wouldn't say anything, but Hero and Legendary members who write blindly without being able to read a few posts

I actually did a quick scroll down, I didn't see that. Sorry for missing it.

Plus what I want to know/see is the actual topic where the competition was held.

[CellBot.io]

This is stupid. You only need to know 24 backup words or 12 or 1 with brain wallet. Nobody needs to bring hardware wallet who want to move bitcoin to another country.

[NeuroticFish]

This is stupid. You only need to know 24 backup words or 12 or 1 with brain wallet. Nobody needs to bring hardware wallet who want to move bitcoin to another country.

Indeed. I see bigger chance it was mistaken for an USB stick or similar and they were looking if it doesn't contain anything illegal or maybe they've tried to see if it's not something else than it looks (just a shell containing drugs or I don't know what).

OP, keep in mind that there aren't that many who know what Bitcoin is and even less who know what a hardware wallet it.
Also, OP, you may want to read this about KeepKey before you try too hard to work with it.

[20kevin20]

Be it legally checked through customs or not, I would personally not trust that HW anymore. My advise is.. just keep it aside. IMO it's not worth it to risk. Although the hardware wallet might've been unboxed at customs, is there really any assurance the HW hasn't been tampered with along its way or even beforehand?

I'm especially paranoid when it comes to blockchain stuff; I was a little in doubt even when I received my Nano S directly from their factory. I'd be extra paranoid if the package I had received was open. Chances of receiving a hardware wallet that has been physically tampered with are very very low, but I would not take any chance tbh.

[Jet Cash]

Indeed. I see bigger chance it was mistaken for an USB stick or similar

I didn't think of that. You wouldn't mistake it for a usb stick, but it could be a small ssd. I looked at the customs declaration, and it describes the content as electronic documents, and that could have got them interested.

I'm not too bothered about it being stolen, or somebody trying to crack it, as I think I keep my systems fairly secure. I'm probably going to use Kali as the OS with it for various reasons not related to the wallet. I like the association with Shape Shift, and I hope that I can use it to help me sell domain names for a variety of cryptos, and to convert those to Bitcoin for long term savings.

Part of the initialisation process is to upgrade the software, and hopefully that would clear any tampering. I think it unlikely that the device has been modified though, and I can't see the customs being very excited by anything that I do.

[Utoy101]

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My suspicion is that the package was picked up in a scan, and sent for analysis to check for possible money laundering. Sending a loaded wallet is obviously a way to transfer funds with them being recorded on the blockchain. I haven't used any hardware wallets, so I'm wondering how easy it is for government agencies to check for stored Bitcoin in the wallet.

This might be the case, may be the agencies suspected it moght be a means of sending laundered fund and decided to do some digging but it is nearly impossible to really break into a wallet they don't have a key to if at all the wallet was pre-loaded with funds. Or looking at it from another angle, it might be a delivery agent try to play smart and not really the government 

[Zionatin]

That is very strange but you are being paranoid. Sending something physically is counterproductive. Why would you launder money with a wallet? It takes longer to get there and it might get lost or something. If you laundering money you are laundering lots of money. Do you really think someone would risk that much money sending a physical copy of a wallet? That is just silly. Much better to use an exchange or mixer or guess what? Not even bother at all. Drugs are bought every day and sent all over the world. They can't track everything. If they did then no parcel would ever get anywhere. People seem to think law enforcement have some sort of magic powers. They don't. They just like you and me.

If you want to launder money you do not do it through currency. Not even crypto. Your source of income doesn't need to be traced. If the government see's you are spending more money then you could possibly earn they will ask questions. When people launder money they have fronts. They "invest" in bogus companies that don't exist or even some that do exist but are a front for something else. This is why KYC annoys me so much.
People don't use methods that require the kind of KYC they demand from us innocent folk. They buy property and do all sorts of things to spread the money.

I promise you that law enforcement agencies have better things to do. They looking to catch people laundering millions of $$ worth of stolen assets. It doesn't matter the form.

[ChiBitCTy]

As the sender of this wallet, I'm obviously a bit annoyed by the fucking w/of the package.  I haven't read through all the comments 100% yet, so I'm curious to see what everyone has had to say about this, but I have never heard of anything like this before.  Very weird.

[The Sceptical Chymist]

In recent years, in some countries of the world, customs have been supervising not only postal packages containing electronic equipment, but also personal electronic items such as mobile phones or laptops.

And that's a bunch of bullshit, as is the experience Jet Cash went through.  Taking a hardware wallet on a plane or having it sent somewhere?  So what?  If you wanted to move huge amounts of money, you could just send bitcoin to someone in another country instead of flying it over.  There's no need for any government agency to know how much you've got on that wallet (and it's a damn good thing they'd have a hard time figuring it out themselves with just the wallet to work with).

Good to see you active here again, Jet Cash.  I'd wondered where you've been lately.

[mk4]

Damn JC is out of his long hybernation.

Indeed. I see bigger chance it was mistaken for an USB stick or similar and they were looking if it doesn't contain anything illegal or maybe they've tried to see if it's not something else than it looks (just a shell containing drugs or I don't know what).

Yea, I'm personally betting that this is the case too. Smuggling drugs by hiding them on various items is something that's pretty much always on the news lol, so this is them probably just taking things more seriously(though I'm definitely not a fan of the rummaging). Not to mention that a KeepKey is significantly larger than a Ledger and a Trezor too, and it looks somewhat like a container.


image source

[Jet Cash]

Thanks for all the replies, and maybe it is time for a summary to bring back the thread focus.

I'm a Bitcoin maximalist, and I only use the wallet in a full node. I'm aware that this is a bit of a limited perspective, and that is why I was pleased to be awarded a hardware wallet. There are many wallets available now, and I don't know much about them, so this is a great chance for me to get some hands on experience of the concept. I'm particularly pleased with this one, as it is integrated with ShapeShift, and it would appear that I can use the wallet to accept a variety of cryptos and convert them into a long term Bitcoin holding. This is great for my domain name sales business. It is also important to state thart there are no coin transfers associated with this prize. I am also grateful to ChiBitCTy for his help in this matter.

The interesting topics ( to me ) that have come out of this thread are
- The use of a hardware wallet to create an effective physical coin for cryptos.
- The government interest in cross border transfers of cryptos
- The use of a hardware wallet for coin transfers without using the internet.

When I have sorted out the system I want to use, I'll start a few threads about this. They will be a bit different from the normal as they will have a nomadic perspective.

[MCobian]

That sometimes happens, but not all countries do that. Maybe your hardware wallet is under suspicion of American customs. So before
sending to you, the hardware wallets are first checked by American customs. Then the seal is open, maybe your hardware wallets package
is considered dangerous or suspicious. But if I receive a package in such circumstances, obviously I will not use. Because of fear of hardware
wallets, I have installed the recorder and my privacy is threatened.

[Kakmakr]

I really feel that they are pissing into the wind with actions like this. Why would someone use a well known Bitcoin hardware wallet to launder money? It would be much easier just to send someone your Bitcoin address and then to transfer the money to them... why send that to someone on a hardware wallet?    (Alternatively... you could transfer bitcoins to a paper wallet and then just break up the private key and send sections of it with different electronic media to someone.. eg. Voice note / WhatsApp / email / online chat etc.)

Do you know if your seed words was generated and possibly exposed to them or did you generate it yourself when you configured the wallet for the first time?

[pooya87]

In recent years, in some countries of the world, customs have been supervising not only postal packages containing electronic equipment, but also personal electronic items such as mobile phones or laptops.

And that's a bunch of bullshit, as is the experience Jet Cash went through.  Taking a hardware wallet on a plane or having it sent somewhere?  So what?  If you wanted to move huge amounts of money, you could just send bitcoin to someone in another country instead of flying it over.  There's no need for any government agency to know how much you've got on that wallet (and it's a damn good thing they'd have a hard time figuring it out themselves with just the wallet to work with).

even if off-chain transfer of bitcoin were the goal and some illegal activities were involved, there still is no reason to use a hardware wallet to do the transfer because it would become apparent that bitcoin is being transferred and that also leaves a trace!
a much simpler way is to use a piece of paper. the key could be encrypted with a strong password using customized encryption technique and the encrypted key and the password are communicated separately. easy peasy...

[NeuroticFish]

BTW  Jet Cash case got me thinking about possible incidents with customs during border crossing. What if they   turn their attention to  to my Ledger wallet and require me to enter my PIN to check the fund I'm possessing. What the  best reaction should be in  this case? Would it better yet if  I never  take it with me on business trips abroad?

I don't think that's possible to do legally. They also don't check how much money you have in your online banking application, right?
What I mean is that they look for how much cash you carry. You can have as much as you want in bank.
And for Bitcoin, that has to be converted into a country's currency to count as funds.

However, let's say you are right and they care about your bitcoins. Do they know what a hardware wallet is? Highly unlikely. But let's say they know. You can enter wrong pin 3 times ("stress because of police") and you recover some other time from the seed. They cannot know if you have 1$ there or billions.

[LoyceV]

My suspicion is that the package was picked up in a scan, and sent for analysis to check for possible money laundering. Sending a loaded wallet is obviously a way to transfer funds with them being recorded on the blockchain.

I don't think it's very likely anyone would send a physical device to transfer funds that way. A blockchain transaction doesn't reveal if the transaction was to another wallet of your own, or to someone on another continent.
By sending a wallet without making a transaction, the receiver knows the sender can still access the coins, and even if that's the plan, sending the mnemonic seed split into several parts via different encrypted channels is much easier than sending the actual device. I've used something similar to receive mnemonic seeds for my Fork claiming service.


I would consider the device compromised now. Don't trust it anymore.

see if somebody here will sell a small amount of crypto to load on it.

I would if I could receive pounds anonymously, but I can't.

[pixie85]

I had things stolen from packages sent from EU to Australia and back. I haven't sent any contraband but still someone had opened my mail and took out some things that were more bulky than a standard piece of paper. I bet they were looking for jewelry.

They also like to check electronics because people have sent narcotics and stuff hidden in battery compartments of electronic devices.

If the wallet was new and they had some idea about the way it works they could have written down the seed and hope someone will ignore the broken seal and still deposit onto it.

[suzanne5223]

What, that's actually a thing? Isn't the unopened package/ anti-tampering seal already a guarantee the wallet is brand new?

Yes, it is but the OP said the hardware wallet was sealed with box supplied by the manufacturer, definitely there is a name or description on the sealed box which indicates the package contains bitcoin wallet which the reason why the custom first seized it because most government agency believe everything that have to do with crypto is always involved with money laundering and the wallet was said to be a loaded wallet.