On September 22, someone transferred a total of 60 bitcoins into three new wallets.

On October 9, all three wallets were emptied, and the money flowed into a single address.

The dramatic twist: the owner of the money was a scammer himself.

According to Chainalysis, which revealed the details on X this week, the guy was running a “task scam”: first, he hired people to place fake orders and leave positive reviews for products, paying them a little money to sweeten the deal. Then, once a “negative balance” appeared in their accounts, he told them they had to deposit money before they could withdraw it—the classic setup for a pig-butchering scam. He converted the money he stole into 60 $BTC and stashed it in three new wallets, thinking he was in the clear.

Foolproof, my ass. On October 9, all three wallets were drained.

This happened to coincide with Ledger’s “spy chip” scandal: devices sold by Southeast Asian distributor CryptoBilis were found to contain a hardware implant that could steal the 24-word recovery phrase during setup and send it over a mobile network. According to CoinDesk, Ledger has asked distributors in Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Hong Kong to pull all their products from sale. A total of 530 addresses were affected.

One detail needs clarifying, though: Chainalysis didn’t say where the guy bought his three devices. The 60 bitcoins were indeed stolen (about $4.8 million), but Ledger is still investigating whether a spy chip was responsible—so let’s not jump to conclusions.

But that doesn’t make the story any less funny: a guy who amassed 60 bitcoins by scamming people ended up getting cleaned out by someone even more technically ruthless. In the end, the scythe came for him too.

A cold wallet can protect you from hackers, but not from tampering before it leaves the factory. When buying a device, where you buy it matters more than the device itself.

Those 60 bitcoins are now sitting in some address, gathering dust. The only question is: would the rightful owner dare report it and claim the money?