Security News > 2023 > October > Florida man jailed after draining $1M from victims in crypto SIM swap attacks

Jordan Persad, of Orlando, was also ordered to pay $945,833 in restitution.

According to a plea agreement reached with US prosecutors [PDF], between at least March 2021 and September 2022, Persad and his co-conspirators, some he only knew by their online handles, used SIM swapping to siphon funds from their marks.

What's interesting is that this kind of thing is usually done by convincing a victim's mobile carrier to reassign the mark's cellphone number to the SIM in the scammer's phone.

The crook typically gets control of a victim's email first via this method, and once in their inbox, resets more account passwords via email until the thief can get into things like their victim's cryptocurrency wallets hosted by exchanges.

In a statement, prosecutors said he "Hacked into victims' email accounts, hijacked their cell phone numbers, and gained unauthorized access to their online cryptocurrency accounts."

In the plea agreement, Persad said he obtained log files of people's email address and password combinations; logged into people's webmail; took control of the numbers associated with those marks' SIM cards; and then raided their crypto-wallets.

News URL

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/10/30/sim_swapping_crypto_crook_jailed/