38 transactions totaling $588,000 were made with the largest transfer amounting to $81,200.
According to cryptocurrency investigator ZachXBT, consumers who downloaded a fraudulent Ledger Live app from Microsoft’s app store lost almost $600,000 in Bitcoins.
On November 5, the on-chain analyst discovered the scam known as “Ledger Live Web3.” It deceives people into believing that they are downloading “Ledger Live,” which is a user interface for offline cryptocurrency storage on Ledger hardware wallets.
The scammer has received about 16.8 BTC worth of $588,00 over the course of 38 transactions using the wallet address “bc1q.y64q,” according to Blockchain.com. After two transactions totaling about $115,200, the scammer’s wallet now has $473,800, or 13.5 BTC, in it.
ZachXBT mentioned in a follow-up post that Microsoft might have taken down the phoney Ledger Live app from its store.
On October 24, a $5,210 transaction was sent to the wallet address of the scammer. The wallet had not been used prior to that. The majority of these transactions have taken place since November 2, with the largest transfer on November 4 totaling $81,200.
ZachXBT even asserted that Microsoft “should be held liable” for permitting the fraudulent Ledger Live app to exist in its app store, claiming to have received two messages from victims on November 4.
Additionally, this is not the first time a phoney Ledger Live app has entered Microsoft’s app store. Two different times in December and March, Ledger’s support account on X (formerly Twitter) alerted users to the existence of a phoney Ledger Live app.