A cryptocurrency investor lost approximately $6.9 million after purchasing a fake cold wallet from the Chinese version of TikTok, which appeared factory-sealed and legitimate but was actually compromised before sale.
The wallet was tampered with during its creation, meaning the private keys were already known to the scammers before the buyer received the device.
This sophisticated trap gave criminals full access to any funds transferred to the wallet, despite the appearance of security from a sealed package.
The stolen crypto (roughly 50 million yuan) was laundered rapidly through a platform which obscures transaction traces, making recovery nearly impossible.
The scam exploited TikTok's legitimate e-commerce platform, where third-party sellers offered these counterfeit wallets at discounted prices to attract buyers.
Security experts warn that about 99% of such “new” or “unopened” cold wallets sold on social media are fake or pre-tampered, urging investors to buy only from official, trusted manufacturers or authorized resellers.
This incident illustrates a broader trend of increasingly sophisticated hardware wallet scams targeting crypto investors, moving beyond typical phishing to compromising devices at the fundamental level of private key generation.
So, trusting a seemingly sealed cold wallet sold on TikTok led to a catastrophic loss due to hardware tampering that allowed scammers to steal private keys before the wallet even reached the user.
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