Topic: My hardware wallet was seized by US customs. - page 4. (Read 1192 times)

Breaking into a hardware wallet to investigate potential money laundering is such a strange thing to do. Why would anyone send a wallet with bitcoins instead of sending a Bitcoin transaction? It's so unsecure, because you'll have to trust that the other party didn't copy the private key. And if the seals aren't broken, there's a really low chance that someone already put some coins in it.

So, either whoever did this wanted to steal coins, or these customs officials are just dumb and have an urge to check every piece of electronics. I wonder if they check every USB stick or a Blu-ray disc, because those can have bitcoins on them too.

I'm not too bothered about the police of MI5 checking on me. Although I am experimenting as a digital nomad, this doesn't mean that I reject the laws and infrastructure of the country. Good luck if they want to check on me though, as it was delivered to a friends address, and he relies on his daughter ( at a different address) for any computing stuff that he needs to do.

Thanks for the comments on Keep Key, and it sounds as if I should start with just 0.01 Bitcoin. My node is out of sync at the moment, so it might be a while before I can do the transfer, or maybe I will experiment with an out of sync node just for the knowledge.

Well that is interesting. I thought I would read the getting started manual, but Morrisons has blocked the keep key site. Morrisons is the supermarket providing the WiFi, and they seem to be anti Bitcoin and crypto. They do allow me to access Bitcoin Talk however.

Wow, that's some intense stuff! I don't know if it's okay for them to do such checks, to be honest...
I also had a bad situation with a hardware wallet and customs, but a different one.
When I won the newest Ledger wallet from Bitcasino.io, it was also stopped at the customs. My package wasn't damaged, but it was stopped at the customs on the grounds of needing to pay taxes. I would not have needed to pay them if Ledger did not pack Ledger Nano S along with Ledger Nano X 'as a token of appreciation', and the sum reached this ridiculously low limit of tax-free price. I was living abroad back then, so I arranged for my sister to take it for me. Anyway, the customs officers claimed that the price stated by Ledger officially in the bill is too low to be true, and that such wallets cost more and thus she has to pay even more taxes (and even without this 'extra taxes' thing it was $20 for what cost $130). Which is ridiculous, and they clearly just wanted a bribe (unfortunately, corruption is a big thing in my country). Instead, we decided not to collect it from the customs due to unfairness of the situation. It then arrived back to Europe to Ledger, and I arranged for my friend in the EU to take it, and then she got it to me through personal travel to my home country (this way the limit on the price is 10 times higher, so it wasn't stopped at the customs at all). Customs suck, apparently especially so when it's crypto wallets, 'cause after a while I had other things arriving from abroad without any problems.

I don't want to ruin your fun with a new device, but KeepKey it is not something that has made many people happy. I've never used it personally, so I can't speak from personal experience, but from everything I've read so far I haven't found too many satisfied users. Maybe your personal experience will be different because you haven't used any other hardware wallet so far so you can't make a comparison.

Yes, the Keepkey is a worthless black bricklet

Hardware are visible and hence are always prone to being searched by authorities. A hardware wallet being sent by mail internationally would of course attract attention. They could be one of the easiest way to launder money or fund terrorism. This also revealed your identity and location and probably might have been added you on the surveillance list. MI5 field operatives might be roaming around your house.

Does anyone approve the possibility of bitcoin theft by US custom officials?

Thanks for the congrats.

The wallet is a keep key, and I can't check on anything atm, as I am in a supermarket car park waiting for an Amazon delivery. The indications are that the product was brand new on dispatch, and I take the point about a possible compromising of the security. Maybe I should do a factory reset before I start to use it. When I get the chance, I'l move a small amount onto it - maybe 0.1 Bitcoin . I'll start a review thread, and tell people what I think about the concept, and its ease of use for digital nomads.At the moment I've got mildly positive opinions, and I hope that will be justified.

This is something we do not hear every day, thanks for sharing it with us. I think there are two possibilities here. the first one according to what you said, was checked by the customs to see if there was some huge amount of BTC inside that hardware wallet and might using it for money laundering. the second one is someone might want to see if that wallet is holding a huge amount of BTC so that they can get it with some force and will think of a way to get it from you. In this case, I think it's not safe to send our own wallet in this way.

I think whatever hardware wallet brand it is, it's possible to check if it was used, right? If there's a wallet already been created there, the seal would be ripped, and the box opened already. If the government is using the customs to check for possible devices like that, they should know that it's easier to just send BTC instead of a physical device in which they could seize it, right? I'm just thinking of the possibilities as well.

It's probably too late but congratulations on winning the competition, Jet Cash!

You didn't write which hardware wallet it was, but if it was a Ledger or Trezor it would be a much better option if it was sent directly from the EU, because then such problems would certainly not occur.

It is very likely that US customs inspected the package, perhaps precisely because of the suspicion of illegal money transfer, but it is also possible that this was done by anyone in the supply chain in order to modify the device. As for checking whether crypto is in the hardware wallet, each such device has protection in the form of PIN and possible additional passphrase protection, so it's not easy to peek into someone's wallet. For example, the Ledger will reset to the factory settings if the wrong PIN is entered three times in a row.

In recent years, in some countries of the world, customs have been supervising not only postal packages containing electronic equipment, but also personal electronic items such as mobile phones or laptops.

https://www.businessinsider.com/can-us-border-agents-search-your-phone-at-the-airport-2017-2

What, that's actually a thing? Isn't the unopened package/ anti-tampering seal already a guarantee the wallet is brand new?

An awful lot more trouble than it's worth. If it was a Ledger you'd only have a few attempts to crack the pin before it's bricked. If it's a Trezor each failed attempt takes longer before you can try again until it stretches out to months between attempts.

I would assume the average customs agent knows nothing about how hardware wallets work so it's possible they tried. If they did then it's a pointless exercise.

It's just as likely a clueless and dishonest employee somewhere had a fiddle too.

As some of you know, I won a hardware wallet in a recent competition here in Bitcoin Talk. That was 4 months ago. The wallet was dispatched promptly following the announcement of the results, but I have only just received it. The wallet was contained in a (probably) sealed box supplied by the manufacturer, and double bagged for dispatch. I received the package in a Royal Mail bag which declared that the packaging had been damaged before entering the UK.Both of the bags had been ripped open and not resealed, and the security tab on the box was missing.

My suspicion is that the package was picked up in a scan, and sent for analysis to check for possible money laundering. Sending a loaded wallet is obviously a way to transfer funds with them being recorded on the blockchain. I haven't used any hardware wallets, so I'm wondering how easy it is for government agencies to check for stored Bitcoin in the wallet.