Man loses Rs 4.9 crore worth of crypto wealth in seconds due to a simple iPhone mistake

Investing in crypto can be highly rewarding financially but it can also entail a lot of heartbreaks and shocks because of its dependency on mobile and internet technology.

Domenic Iacovone understands the latter part very well because he lost a whopping $6,50,000 (Rs 4.97 crores) worth of crypto wealth in a matter of seconds thanks to a small iPhone mistake.

Iacovone said he kept all his valuable NFTs in one digital wallet. And this resulted in a financial tragedy like no other.

Using a less-popular iCloud hack, scammers were able to access his digital assets stored in the wallet.

Domenic said he received a phone call from a number that was identified as 'Apple' on his caller id. When he called the number back, someone asked for a code that was sent to his phone. And just seconds later, his entire digital wallet was wiped out.

He wrote: “This is how it happened, Got a phone call from apple, literally from apple (on my caller Id) Called it back because I suspected fraud and it was an apple number. So I believed them. They



asked for a code that was sent to my phone and 2 seconds later my entire MetaMask was wiped.”

"Hey y’all, let’s see how amazing this community can be. My entire wallet was just stolen. Totally wiped out," read his first tweet.

Dominic said he took the call from the suspicious 'Apple' number thinking it was a fraud. He said he ignored the call several times until noticing 'Apple Inc' on the caller ID.

The crypto investor said the scammer posed as a member of Apple's tech team and said that his account had been compromised.

In a further tweet, Dominic said the hackers gained access to his 12-word 'seed phrase' that is usually provided by the MetaMask digital wallet. It's a top-secret security detail that shouldn't be shared with anyone.

What he didn't know is that MetaMask automatically stores the seed phrase file on iCloud.

Dominic flagged to loss to MetaMask in a series of Tweets and responses.

"If you have enabled iCloud backup for app data, this will include your password-encrypted MetaMask vault," MetaMask tweeted.