The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Connecticut has successfully recovered and forfeited more than $600,000 worth of cryptocurrency from a fraud scheme, as part of ongoing efforts by federal law enforcement to seize digital assets.
In September 2025, an individual using a Ledger hardware wallet in Connecticut was deceived by a phishing scam, according to a Department of Justice press release. The victim received a fraudulent letter claiming to be from “Ledger Security & Compliance,” which instructed them to carry out a supposed mandatory security check. Following these instructions led to the compromise of their hardware wallet and resulted in the loss of $234,000 in cryptocurrency.
The FBI and state police tracked the movement of the stolen funds, facilitating the seizure of approximately $600,000 in USDT, a stablecoin involved in a civil forfeiture complaint linked to wire fraud and money laundering charges.
Decrypt attempted to contact Ledger for comments on this incident but did not receive an immediate response. This event is part of a pattern of phishing schemes targeting crypto hardware wallet users. Similar tactics were observed in a recent scam involving fake postal letters sent to owners of Trezor and Ledger wallets, which included company logos, holograms, and QR codes leading victims to fraudulent sites.
David Sehyeon Baek, a cybercrime consultant, explained that the use of physical mail adds credibility since it indicates the scammers can locate their targets. This tactic enhances the perceived legitimacy of the scam.
The phishing scheme is reminiscent of previous data breaches at hardware wallet manufacturers, such as Ledger’s 2020 e-commerce breach which exposed over one million emails and a January 2026 incident involving its e-commerce partner that compromised order data. Trezor has also experienced consumer data exposure through incidents like a 2022 MailChimp insider exploit and a subsequent third-party support portal breach affecting approximately 66,000 users, leading to ongoing phishing attacks.
In recent months, significant amounts of cryptocurrency have been seized by federal and international authorities. The FBI sought forfeiture of $200,000 in USDT connected to a “pig butchering” scam on Tinder, while Florida authorities confiscated $1.5 million in Dogecoin, Pepe, and Solana tokens in a case involving a Chinese national.