The US law enforcement just took down a noteworthy SIM hijacking ring. Federal officials have accused 9 men with identity theft and wire fraud charges for taking part in The Community, a group that transferred contact numbers to SIM cards owned by them, employed those cards to manage online accounts (specifically those with 2-factor authentication) and promptly get hold of cryptocurrency. The group has been blamed of perpetrating 7 hacks that stole over $2.4 Million in digital currencies from victims.
Similar with some of these scams, The Community had assistance from the inside. Three of the accused men (Fendley Joseph, Robert Jack, and Jarratt White) operated at wireless carriers, and supposedly accepted bribes in return for assisting the others swipe user identities. In other scenarios, Community members might pose as the victims in user service conversations and swap contacts to SIM cards themselves.
The fines can be serious. The theft and fraud charges each has an utmost 20-year prison sentence. There are also accusations for serious identity theft in support of wire fraud, even though their 2-year maximum sentence might be served together with the real wire fraud accusation.
On a related note, two Romanian inhabitants are about to encounter prison time for a specifically huge digital crime bender. A federal jury has discovered Bogdan Nicolescu and Radu Miclaus accused for a scam that stole credit card info and other sensitive data by hijacking more than 400,000 devices situated majorly in the US. The duo supposedly designed custom virus in 2007 that might pose as a lawful organization (such as the Norton, IRS, or Western Union) and affect devices when consumers opened a file. From here on, the accused stole money and info by injecting false websites (such as bogus auctions on eBay), gathering contact data that can be employed to affect more devices.