Ebay Ledger Thief Has a Change of Heart - Seed Words Still Missing

Last week we brought you the story about the unfortunate user who was scammed by a fraudulent ledger. The user had bought the ledger from a third party vendor on Ebay not knowing that it had been pre-configured.

Now, according to another post by the user, the thief has had a change of heart. He decided to send the coins back to the user's scam ledger.

Many would think that the story would end there but alas, the seed words that were originally sent with the ledger were nothing more than a dupe. Hence, the user is still stuck unable to access those funds.

The Magic Seeds

Given that the seed words the scam ledger came with did not work, it means that the only person who still has access to those words is the thief himself. Only the Ebay scammer can recover the funds that are attributed to the scam ledger.

This will explain the impassioned plea by the victim in order to get access to his coins. He offered the thief the option to either send him the seed words or to transfer the coins to separate addresses. He said:

…as long as you are the only one to have access to this seed (account) and I cannot access it, it is still classed as stolen

He also let the thief know that only if he was able to send him the coins would he drop any charges for the theft. It was most likely that he inquired from the police as to the theft given that he knew the approximate sentence he could face.

Thief Likely to React?

It is uncertain whether the thief would be willing to send the funds or the seed to the victim. Given that he has sent the funds back, one can be certain that he has indeed read the posts and followed the news about the scam.

However, he could merely have returned it as he found that there would be no easy way to cash out the gains. He may think that any interaction with the victim could place him in more jeopardy.

The hope is that he does indeed complete his about turn and send the funds back to the victim. It could lead to the victim dropping any charges which would reduce any leads in the case.

Moreover, it could lead to an example of a good deed from a one-time thief who realised that even in anonymity, coin theft is theft and it has consequences.