A client, introduced by a friend a few months ago, needed to recover over 400 ETH from an imToken wallet. In the past few days, I prepared the contract in advance and met to sign it.

The contract required an address, so I asked the client for it. Upon checking, I saw that the address had held many coins before, but all were transferred out in 2018, and the current balance was 0.

The client provided a screenshot of the wallet on their phone, and I could immediately tell it was imToken version 1.5. Since that version was old and no longer maintained, it wouldn't update the balance. It was clear that the client should have upgraded to version 2.0 long ago, and the ETH had been transferred out in 2018.

But after so much time, the client forgot, saw ETH still showing in version 1.5, and thought the coins were still there, so they wanted to recover the wallet.

How did I know it was version 1.5 just from looking at the app interface? Because I made the same mistake before—seeing coins still displayed in version 1.5, then checking the Ethereum explorer to confirm the coins were gone.

So that’s why I always ask for an address whenever a client comes for a consultation—to confirm the balance and rule out misunderstandings.