Musician loses $420K Bitcoin in fake app scam

American musician Garrett Dutton said he lost $420,000 worth of Bitcoin after installing a malicious app impersonating Ledger Live and entering his seed phrase.

Dutton said his 5.9 BTC, accumulated over a decade as a retirement fund, was drained “in an instant” after downloading the fake application from Apple’s App Store.

“I been in the crypto circus since 2017. Today they caught me off guard,”

Dutton said.

Blockchain investigator ZachXBT traced the stolen funds to deposit addresses linked to KuCoin across nine transactions.

The incident underscores ongoing risks in crypto security, with scammers continuing to exploit fake apps to trick users into revealing sensitive wallet information.

According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Americans lost over $11 billion to crypto-related scams in 2025, up from $9 billion the previous year.

Similar fake Ledger apps have appeared on platforms such as Microsoft’s app store in past incidents, highlighting persistent vulnerabilities in app review systems.

At the time of reporting, Bitcoin price was $71,022.64.