How to Check Your Ledger Crypto Wallet for Tampering by Weight

In October 2026, another scandal erupted involving hardware crypto wallets from Ledger. This time, over $80 million was reported stolen from Ledger wallets purchased in Asia from the supplier CryptoBills. The company later officially confirmed that devices distributed as new Ledger Nano X and Stax crypto wallets actually contained hardware modifications with eSIM chips designed to transmit secret seed phrases to fraudsters after users activated their wallets.

Following supplier inspections, Ledger wallets with "implants" were also discovered in European MediaMarkt stores from the supplier Aqipa GmbH.

Compromised Ledger wallets have also been found at other suppliers worldwide. However, the origin of these modified crypto wallets remains unclear.

On October 13, a list of stores potentially selling unsafe Ledger wallets was published, along with a risk level for purchasing a counterfeit Ledger. The highest risk stores include CryptoBills, Shopee Mall, Lazada, MediaMarkt, and Saturn.

The full list of stores with counterfeit Ledger wallets is provided below.

How to Check Your Ledger Hardware Wallet

Ledger itself recommends opening your wallet and comparing its internal contents against a reference printed circuit board. The board should not contain any eSIM chips, LTE antennas, control controllers, or non-factory soldering with wires leading to printed circuit boards not provided for in the design (flexible boards). Before disassembling, make sure you have saved your wallet's seed phrase.

At the slightest suspicion of tampering with your Ledger wallet's design, Ledger urges you to transfer all assets to another wallet with a new seed phrase, as your wallet and seed phrase are highly likely to be compromised.

Examples of Modified Ledger Hardware Wallets:

Ledger owners should be especially vigilant if you purchased your wallet within the last 90 days from one of the stores listed above.

For those who don't want to disassemble their Ledger — since you can damage the hardware wallet beyond recovery — there's a simpler approach: simply weigh it on a precise scale with an accuracy of at least 1 gram.

Since modified wallets have been found to contain extra components that add extra grams to the device, it stands to reason that modified devices should weigh more than originals. However, this isn't always the case, as some devices have the stock battery replaced with a smaller one, with a hardware backdoor installed in the freed-up space to steal seed phrases.

Therefore, when checking your Ledger wallet with a scale, you should be alerted not only by a noticeably heavier device but also by deviations below the original Ledger wallet weight.

Table of Ledger Wallets and Their Official Weights:

Conclusion: Buying crypto wallets from resellers rather than directly from the manufacturer's website carries additional risks that your hardware crypto wallet may be compromised and all your crypto assets could be lost with no possibility of recovery.