(InvestigateTV) — A Charlotte man lost more than $1 million in cryptocurrency after falling victim to a phone scam that began with a caller claiming to be from a legitimate crypto company.
Gene Duckett said he received a call one Friday night in March from someone claiming to be from Ledger, a company that makes hardware wallets for cryptocurrency storage.
“The guy on the other end says, ‘Is this Harold? I’m Harold Eugene.’ I said, ‘Yeah, who’s calling?’ He said, ‘My name is Benjamin. I’m from Ledger, and your funds are in danger of being stolen,’” Duckett said.
The caller directed Duckett to a website where he could supposedly secure his funds. The scammers used a multi-step approach to gain his trust.
“They said they needed to give me a security code so that I would know when someone called back that it was a correct person,” Duckett said.
When a second person called who knew the security code, Duckett felt comfortable typing his seed phrase into the website. A seed phrase is a secret recovery phrase that must be entered to access cryptocurrency funds.
After entering his information, Duckett received a call from a third person who told him something had gone wrong.
“He says, ‘Oh, something went wrong.’ And so as soon as he said that, I looked on the XRP Ledger and I had saved my wallet address in there and all of the funds that were in my wallet were gone,” Duckett said.
The caller then hung up, and Duckett realized his funds had been stolen.
“It was $1,038,000. That’s how much it was worth. It is a lot of money,” Duckett said.
Duckett described the emotional impact of the theft, saying his dog could sense his despair that night.
“I’ve really beaten myself up quite a bit about this,” Duckett said.
Cryptocurrency fraud reaches billions
Duckett is not alone in falling victim to cryptocurrency fraud. In 2024, the FBI Internet Complaint Center received almost 150,000 complaints about cryptocurrency fraud, totaling $9.3 billion in losses.
“This is a real global emergency,” said Eithan Raviv, CEO of cybersecurity firm Lionsgate Network.
Raviv works with victims of crypto fraud and helps connect them to law enforcement who can try to recover the funds.
“We provide to our clients and to law enforcement the necessary tracing, the footprints of the current dollars. This gives law enforcement the option to issue a subpoena or a warrant,” Raviv said.
Raviv is currently working on Duckett’s case and said he is hopeful to help get his savings returned.
Company responds to data breach concerns
The cybersecurity expert said Ledger has been the victim of at least two data breaches, which is likely how Duckett was targeted.
A spokesperson for Ledger said in a statement, “Ledger consistently reminds users that we will never under any circumstances ask for their 24 words. We encourage users to exercise vigilance, and we will never contact them by phone.”
See more of Duckett’s story here.
Protection tips
To help protect against cryptocurrency fraud, experts recommend:
- Verify the website you’re using to buy crypto is legitimate and starts with “https” — the “s” stands for secure
- Be wary of phone calls from numbers you don’t know, even if they know your name or other information about you
- Never share your recovery phrase
Anyone who believes they have been scammed can report it to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center at ic3.gov.
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