$4.8M in crypto stolen after Korean tax agency exposes wallet seed

South Korea’s National Tax Service accidentally published images of a seized Ledger hardware wallet that revealed the handwritten seed phrase; shortly after the press release, an attacker used the exposed mnemonic to move approximately 4 million PRTG tokens (about $4.8M) out of the confiscated wallet. The case highlights a procedural security failure with direct financial loss and reinforces guidance to never digitize or publicly disclose seed phrases and to move funds immediately if a seed is exposed.