Featured Image Credit: Kenstocker / NurPhoto / Contributor / Getty
News of a major scam app has been spreading like wildfire this week, after some people reported losing all their cryptocurrency savings.
The scam revolves around a crypto wallet called Leather, one that has become popular with many users, but doesn't yet have its own iOS app.
This has created a gap that scammers seem to have rushed into. According to tech news site Bleeping Computer, bad actors created a fake Leather app and put it on the App Store, fooling some users into thinking that Leather had finally finished its app and released it to the world.
PSA: The Leather Wallet app currently in the iOS store is FAKE 🚨
— Leather — The Bitcoin wallet for the rest of us (@LeatherBTC) March 4, 2024
⚠️ Do not download it, and definitely do not input your seed phrase.
We promise we'll let you know once our mobile app is actually ready!
Leather should only be downloaded directly from https://t.co/V9zpQR40uC.
After downloading it and linking it to their unique wallet, some users reportedly found their savings drained away in transactions and account transfers that they never authorized or initiated.
The situation is pretty dire, and all the more terrible because there's no way to trace this money - the whole point of these crypto transactions is that they're pretty much untraceable.
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This means that their money is pretty much gone - another example of how volatile and risky the crypto space can be.
The real Leather team has apparently made Apple aware of the scam app - we had a look on the App Store and can't seem to see it anywhere.
Meanwhile, if you did unfortunately download the fake app and given it your details, you want to move your currencies to other wallets that are still secure - as soon as you can.
Users have been taking to social media to talk about their losses, and it sounds like at least some of them are pretty devastated, like one who said: "Just lost my ordinals. Might have downloaded a bad version of Leather Wallet from the App Store. Unbelievable. All my decent stuff went here."
Ordinals are a branch of crypto tools that relate to NFTs, which are still around even if the craze has died down massively.
Another said they "lost everything" in the scam, which doesn't sound great, and underlines the sketchiness of trying to make or save your money in crypto, which can be scammed in myriad ways.
Checking out the accounts of those who made the losses though, many of them seem to have bounced back in the week since it went down. In a few cases, they're now discussing other booms and busts for specific coins and currencies - showing just how quickly fortunes in crypto can change.
