You Won’t Believe How Crypto Scammers Are Sliding Into Snail Mail! 🧐📬

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It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a person in possession of a cryptocurrency wallet must be in want of a scam. And what a most ingenious breed of rascals has emerged, dispatching improper, unsolicited post to those respectable owners of Ledger hardware wallets.

The letters, more artfully dissembling than Mr. Wickham on a Sunday, inform the unfortunate recipient that a “critical security update” is at hand; all that is required – nay, demanded! – is the confirmation of one’s private seed phrase. The audacity! Reports of this merry mischief first found their way to society via the digital drawing-room of X on April 29.

Physical Letters: Now With More Deception (And Less Sincerity)

The complaisant Mr. Jacob Canfield received just such a letter, replete with Ledger’s own crest, a business-like address, and a reference number as faux as Lady Catherine’s humility. Dutifully, the correspondence directed its reader to scan a QR code and reveal the sacred 24-word phrase—under pretence that such action was for one’s own good.

To reinforce their farce, the letter employed threats most severe, hinting darkly that “failure to complete this required validation process may lead to limited access to your wallet and funds.” Jane Fairfax herself could not have penned a line fraught with greater anxiety!

Learned security professionals—our era’s Mr. Knightleys—are at pains to stress that one would, by so obliging these scoundrels, be handing over their entire fortune to some digital cousin of Mr. Wickham. He might steal your inheritance, but at least he preferred letters of introduction to QR codes.

Breaking: New scam meta launched. Now they’re sending physical letters to the @Ledger addresses database leak requesting an ‘upgrade’ due to a security risk.

Be very cautious and warn any friends or family that you know is in crypto and is not that savvy.

— Jacob Canfield (@JacobCanfield) April 28, 2025

Recovery Phrases: All That Stands Between You And Ruin

As every debutante of digital society must know, a seed phrase is a talisman of up to 24 words that opens the doors to one’s entire ‘crypto-kingdom’. Possession of such a phrase bestows all the rights and privileges of a baronet—all the more reason that scoundrels desire it with the fervor of a Mrs. Bennet hunting for eligible bachelors.

The esteemed house of Ledger, in the manner of a stern but benevolent guardian, has declared the letters to be entirely counterfeit. Their missive, devoid of poetry but rich in sense, declared:

“Ledger will never call, DM [direct message], or request your 24-word recovery phrase. If it happens, it’s a scam.”

It is no less wise than to ignore any personage who claims, with much flourish, to be Ledger staff or who offers unsolicited help with fund recovery. Substitute “funds” for “propriety” and you have the same scandal as Meryton in autumn, only with more cryptocurrency and fewer militia officers.

One must suspect a more ancient mischief at the root of this affair. Knowledgeable parties recall a nefarious hack of the Ledger database nearly five years prior, wherein the rogue elements absconded with the particulars of over 270,000 clients—names, numbers, and addresses as detailed as any gossip in Hertfordshire.

Indeed, the postman has more than once been the unwitting courier of criminal intent; in 2021, Ledger users were sent spurious devices masquerading as innocent hardware wallets. These gadgets, when connected to a machine, behaved with all the decorum of Lydia Bennet at a dance—dropping malware as they went.

Armed with such information, today’s letter-writing ne’er-do-wells have raised mail fraud to the same heights as the finest society intrigues. We must, therefore, expect this strategy of mingling the old (post) with the new (crypto theft).

For owners of hardware wallets, the rule is as unbending as Lady Catherine: Any firm truly worth your trust would never solicit your private recovery phrase—not by post, pigeon, or carrier owl. It would require an infinite credulity to fall for such a thing; but then, what is society except a triumph of hope over prudence?

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2025-05-01 10:15