Security News > 2022 > October > 'Baby Al Capone' to pay $22m to SIM-swap crypto-heist victim

According to court documents [PDF] filed Friday in federal New York City court, Ellis Pinsky agreed to pay Michael Terpin $22 million for his starring role in the SIM swap and Bitcoin heist.

In a Rolling Stone interview over the summer, Pinsky - dubbed Baby Al Capone by the media - admitted he swiped millions in crypto-coins from Terpin via a SIM swap.

Which, according to Pinsky, is what he did to Terpin: after an AT&T worker did the SIM swap, he and an accomplice found a file in an Outlook account loaded with crypto wallet keys, which were then used to siphon off the money.

According to Terpin's first lawsuit [PDF], in June 2017 a fraudster posing as Terpin convinced an AT&T employee at a store in Connecticut to transfer Terpin's phone number to another SIM card - after 11 earlier attempts at the scam in other stores had failed.

The miscreant then used his access to Terpin's phone number to gain access to his cryptocurrency holdings, and transferred millions of dollars to a different account.

It's Terpin time: Bloke who was SIM jacked twice by Bitcoin thieves gets green light to sue telco for millions.

News URL

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2022/10/15/pinsky_terpin_sim_swap/