An incident involving the theft of 5.5 million XRP cryptocurrency tokens from investor Nancy Jones has highlighted significant security vulnerabilities in crypto asset storage.
The theft occurred from Jones’s Ledger hardware wallet. Investigation points to her ex-boyfriend, Kirk West, as the perpetrator who gained unauthorized access to the device.
While approximately 5 million XRP have been successfully recovered, a substantial portion, amounting to 483,205 XRP and valued at roughly $1.5 million, remains unrecovered and missing.
No official blockchain or cryptocurrency exchange report detailing the theft or the efforts surrounding the partial recovery has been released to the public at this time.
The incident underscores persistent risks associated with safeguarding digital assets, particularly the dangers posed by social engineering attacks and unauthorized physical access to private keys and hardware wallets.