A fake Ledger Live app spread through Apple’s App Store resulted in the theft of at least $9.5 million in crypto assets. Recently, many victims who downloaded this application and lost their wallets began to tell about their experiences on social media. There are also those who suddenly lost all their retirement savings.
Fake application victims suffered great losses
The person, who is stated to be one of the victims of the hack attack and uses the pseudonym @glove on the The user stated that he downloaded what he thought was the official Ledger application while setting up a new computer and experienced serious financial losses.
“I suddenly lost my entire retirement fund, all my Bitcoins were gone.”
Blockchain researcher ZachXBT tracked @glove’s total of 5.92 Bitcoins on the blockchain. It turned out that digital assets, which followed a series of transfer routes within seconds, were transferred to the KuCoin exchange. This method has a structure similar to crypto cleaning chains frequently used during attacks.
The phishing attack, whose activity was detected between April 7-13, affected not only a specific group, but more than 50 victims operating on Bitcoin, Ethereum-based networks, Tron, Solana and the #XRP network. The three biggest victims so far were revealed to have suffered 7-figure losses: $3.23 million USDT was stolen on April 9, $2.08 million USDC was stolen on April 11, and $1.95 million worth of BTC, ETH, and stETH were stolen on April 8.
Funds moved without a trace
According to victims’ reports, before the application was discovered to be fake, many people were entering phrases to recover their wallets into this software, thus giving attackers full access. The stolen digital assets were directed to more than 150 different KuCoin wallets.
It was stated that some transfers took place through a central crypto mixer called AudiA6, which operates with high commissions and is used to hide illegal money movements. It was found remarkable that the exchange was an important center for such transactions, especially at a time when the KuCoin exchange was experiencing legal problems.
In February 2026, regulators in Austria banned KuCoin from accepting new European Union users. This development took place right after the exchange recently received the MiCA license. Additionally, KuCoin had paid a penalty of more than $300 million to settle a serious anti-money laundering investigation in the United States in 2025.
Trust in the App Store has been shaken
Following the incident, Apple removed the fake Ledger Live application from the App Store. However, questions about how the application was approved and how long it remained in the store are still unanswered. Experts state that Apple may face a significant legal risk due to the spread of such an application through the official store.
ZachXBT stated that the incident could lead to a class action lawsuit, and that Apple may face pressure for compensation due to the magnitude of the grievance.
Similar attacks have been constantly coming to the fore in the crypto market in recent years. It is known that investors will lose a total of $17 billion due to hacking and fraud throughout 2025 alone. Fraudsters continue to seize users’ wallet access, especially through social engineering and phishing methods.
One of the victims emphasized the danger facing the industry by saying in his post, “This was the effort of ten years. Everyone should be very careful.”
