🔐 Apple let a fake through — and $1.8M in Bitcoin walked out

Sparrow Wallet is desktop-only. It has never had an iOS version — so any "Sparrow" in the App Store is, by definition, a fake.

Three people typed their seed phrases into one and lost a combined $1.8M. The detail that stings: one victim reported the app to Apple on July 25th. Nine days later, another person downloaded the same fake and lost $840,000. Apple never replied.

Sparrow's developer had been flagging copycat apps since January 2024 — and was threatened with account termination for trying to post a warning listing. A federal lawsuit followed, per TechCrunch.

A closed ecosystem sold as a safety guarantee — eighteen months to remove a fake the trademark holder kept reporting. Walled garden, they said.

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