A 20-year-old resident of Florida has been sentenced to 30 months in jail for his involvement in a series of SIM swap attacks that resulted in the theft of nearly $1 million in cryptocurrency. Jordan Persad, along with a group of co-conspirators, executed these attacks between March 2021 and September 2022.
Their modus operandi involved purchasing access logs containing victims’ email credentials, hijacking their cell phone numbers, and subsequently gaining unauthorized access to the victims’ online cryptocurrency accounts. In one instance described in his plea agreement, the group accessed an Arizona resident’s account and pilfered $28,000 worth of cryptocurrency, which they later divided among themselves.
Throughout these illicit activities, Persad personally earned $475,000, and the entire group defrauded victims of approximately $950,000. As part of his guilty plea in May, Persad has been ordered to pay restitution amounting to $945,833.
What makes this case unusual, as highlighted by The Register, is the sequence of events involved in the SIM swapping process. Typically, SIM swapping begins with an attempt to transfer someone else’s SIM card to the perpetrator’s phone, followed by efforts to compromise other accounts. In this instance, the attackers followed a different pattern.
Notably, the attack bears resemblance to the tactics employed by a cybercrime collective known as Scattered Spider. This group initiated its criminal activities with SIM swapping and phishing attacks before advancing to ransomware and extortion. Currently, Scattered Spider is believed to be collaborating with the ransomware-as-a-service entity BlackCat and has claimed responsibility for attacks on prominent establishments such as Caesars Entertainment and MGM Resorts earlier this year.
This case underscores the evolving nature of cybercriminal activities and the need for robust security measures to safeguard against such threats in the digital landscape.
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