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A student who stole more than $ 5 million in cryptocurrency by hijacking the phone numbers of about 40 victims pleaded guilty and accepted a 10-year prison plea deal, Motherboard learned.
Joel Ortiz accepted the plea agreement last week, said Motherboard Erin West, attorney general of Santa Clara County, Calif., At a meeting held on Thursday. Authorities believe that Mr Ortiz is the first person to be found guilty of a crime for SIM card swapping, an increasingly popular and harmful hacking. Prosecutors and agents who investigated these hacks celebrated the conviction, hoping that this would serve as an example to other suspected criminals already arrested and those who have not yet been arrested.
"We think justice has been done, and I hope it's a strong message for this community," said Samy Tarazi, one of the officers who investigated the issue. Ortiz case.
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Ortiz is one of the few SIM card interchangers that have been arrested in the last year for hijacking phone numbers and using them to hack emails, social networking accounts and Bitcoin wallets online. . Xzavyer Narvaez, accused of stealing about a million dollars in Bitcoin; Nicholas Truglia, who is also accused of stealing millions of dollars in Bitcoin; and Joseph Harris, one of the most infamous SIM card exchangers who allegedly stole more than $ 14 million in cryptocurrency.
The authorities believe that the slow but steady arrest and sentencing of Ortiz will send a clear message to those still in the country.
"Every arrest we made caused a shock wave in this community," said West. "They were not safe in their basement, they were not safe in their mother's room, they were found and arrested one by one."
West added that "by reviewing Joel's 10-year sentence, it shows that our community will not tolerate this type of crime. And we will continue to find all the leaders. "
Read more: How to protect yourself from SIM cards exchanged
West and her colleagues declined to specify the number of investigations in progress, but she added that they had made new arrests and new search warrants.
Almost all of these investigations were conducted by the regional law enforcement team or REACT, a working group of several California police departments. Tarazi, a REACT agent, said that in 2018, they had received hundreds of reports of SIM attacks by victims. According to him, this information has now slowed down.
Ortiz will be officially sentenced on March 14th.
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