For the first time in the California county of Santa Clara, a condemnation of a swindler involved in the so-called SIM swap has been pronounced. 20-year-old student Joel Ortiz, who stole cryptocurrency from 40 people worth about $ 5,000,000, pleaded guilty and sentenced him to 10 years in prison.
Let me remind you that the problem of SIM swap has been talked about more and more often in recent years. The essence of this fraudulent scheme is that the offender turns to the representatives of the cellular operator of his victim and uses social engineering. Posing as the real owner of the number, the attacker claims that he has lost or broke the SIM card and is trying to transfer the number to a new SIM card. As a result, the attacker gains full control over the victim's number and all the services to which he is attached, as well as one-time passwords, two-factor authentication codes, and so on.
Last year, Vice Motherboard reporters released the results of an investigation proving that the practice is widely used by cybercriminals, which allows them to "hijack" accounts and other people's identities in dozens and even hundreds. Even worse, such scams are increasingly being used to attack cryptocurrency investors. For example, we previously talked about the case when Bitcoin investor Michael Terpin filed a lawsuit against telecommunications giant AT&T for stealing more than 3,000,000 different cryptocurrency tokens via SIM swap.
Now Joel Ortiz has become the first fraudster to be convicted of such a crime, and experts are already calling this an important precedent. The fact is that in addition to Ortiz, other criminals are awaiting sentences on similar charges. For example, the Manhattan attorney's office accuses 20-year-old Dawson Bakies of 50 cases of fraud, identity theft and theft of more than 50 people.
In addition, were previously arrested Javier Navarrese (Xzavyer Narvaez), has stolen a million dollars a Bitcoin-equivalent Nicolas Truglia, also stole about one million dollars, and the famous SIM-swindler Joseph Harris, who is accused of embezzlement of 14,000,000 dollars.
Ortiz is reported to begin serving his sentence on March 14, 2019.
