Fake Ledger app on App Store drains American musician's 5.9 BTC

Garrett Dutton, an American singer and musician better known as G. Love, has lost 5.9 BTC, worth roughly $420,000, after entering his seed phrase in a malicious app disguised as the official Ledger app.

In a Saturday post on X, Dutton said the scam wiped out his retirement fund. He explained that he had downloaded the imposter app from the App Store onto his new computer and entered his seed phrase.

"All my BTC gone in an instant," said Dutton, the frontman of hip-hop blues band G. Love & Special Sauce. He added that his other cryptocurrency holdings were not affected.

Onchain sleuth ZachXBT said the attacker has laundered the stolen bitcoin through KuCoin deposit addresses across nine transactions.

Scammers have long targeted Ledger hardware wallet users, and have employed various tactics such as phishing emails. In some cases, attackers sent physical letters to Ledger customers requesting their seed phrases.

Ledger has warned that official app stores can host fake and malicious apps "designed purely to steal your crypto," and urged users to download its wallet app only from its official website.

"Ledger will never ask for your 24 words. If anyone, or any app, is asking for your 24 words, assume something is wrong," Ledger CTO Charles Guillemet said in a statement shared with The Block. "The only protection that holds is keeping your private keys on a dedicated hardware device with a secure screen, like a Ledger signer, and never entering your seed phrase into any app or website. Your 24 words are your wallet."

In response to the incident, an Apple spokesperson said that the company has removed the fake Ledger app from the App Store, and the developer's account has been terminated.

Crypto-related fraud has been on the rise, with losses climbing to a record $11.36 billion in 2025, according to the FBI's Internet Crime Report. 

The Internet Crime Complaint Center received 181,565 crypto-related complaints last year, marking a 21% increase from 2024, with an average reported loss of $62,604, the report said. In total, 18,589 victims reported losing over $100,000 in crypto-related schemes.

The story has been updated to include comments from Ledger's CTO and Apple.