diff --git a/convert-hf-to-gguf.py b/convert-hf-to-gguf.py
index 27fc9eea6..4a7f500ff 100755
--- a/convert-hf-to-gguf.py
+++ b/convert-hf-to-gguf.py
@@ -2371,6 +2371,11 @@ class Gemma2Model(Model):
         )
         self.gguf_writer.add_sliding_window(self.hparams["sliding_window"])
 
+        # sanity check
+        attn_scalar = self.hparams["query_pre_attn_scalar"]
+        if attn_scalar != hparams["hidden_size"] / hparams["num_attention_heads"]:
+            raise ValueError("query_pre_attn_scalar must be equal to n_embd / n_head")
+
     def modify_tensors(self, data_torch: Tensor, name: str, bid: int | None) -> Iterable[tuple[str, Tensor]]:
         del bid  # unusem