{"id":20756,"date":"2022-12-08T10:10:22","date_gmt":"2022-12-08T18:10:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/2022\/12\/08\/news-14489\/"},"modified":"2022-12-08T10:10:22","modified_gmt":"2022-12-08T18:10:22","slug":"news-14489","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/2022\/12\/08\/news-14489\/","title":{"rendered":"SIM swapper jailed for 18 months over crypto heist"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Nicholas Truglia (25) from Florida was sentenced to 18 months on Thursday for his involvement in a digital heist that cost Michael Terpin (<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/michaelterpin\" target=\"_blank\">@michaelterpin<\/a>), a renowned personality in the cryptocurrency space, $23.8M.<\/p>\n<p>The theft happened on January 2018, where Truglia and his co-conspirators targeted Terpin with a SIM swap attack. They hijacked Terpin&#8217;s phone number and transferred cryptocurrency worth millions from&nbsp;Terpin&#8217;s crypto wallet to an account Truglia controls.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theregister.com\/2022\/10\/15\/pinsky_terpin_sim_swap\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">According to El Reg<\/a>, Terpin&#8217;s cryptocurrency of choice was TRIG, which was worth $7 then. According to&nbsp;<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.documentcloud.org\/documents\/23329053-nicholas-truglia-indictmentgovuscourtsnysd52881410_3\" target=\"_blank\">the indictment<\/a>, Truglia volunteered to &#8220;convert the stolen cryptocurrency into Bitcoin, another form of cryptocurrency, and then transfer the Bitcoin to other scheme participants, while keeping a portion as payment for his services.&#8221;&nbsp;That was&nbsp;<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.bleepingcomputer.com\/news\/security\/sim-swapper-gets-18-months-for-involvement-in-22-million-crypto-heist\/\" target=\"_blank\">at least $673,000<\/a>&nbsp;of stolen funds.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>A US district judge ordered Truglia to pay $20,379,007 for restitution within 60 days. According to Bleeping Computer, Truglia must follow the&nbsp;<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.documentcloud.org\/documents\/23329054-nicholas-truglia-order-of-restitutiongovuscourtsnysd528814610\" target=\"_blank\">restitution orders<\/a>&nbsp;accordingly regarding how much to pay and when: $12,100,000 on or before December 31, 2022; and $8,279,007 on or before January 30, 2021.<\/p>\n<p>US Attorney Damian Williams <a href=\"https:\/\/www.justice.gov\/usao-sdny\/pr\/florida-man-sentenced-18-months-theft-over-20-million-sim-swap-scheme\" target=\"_blank\">said<\/a>: &#8220;Nicholas Truglia and his associates stole a staggering amount of cryptocurrency from the victim through a complex SIM swap scheme. Nevertheless, today&#8217;s sentencing goes to show that no matter how sophisticated the crime is, this Office will continue to successfully prosecute those who choose to defraud others.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Truglia isn&#8217;t the only person named in the SIM swap attack against Terpin.<\/p>\n<p>In October, Terpin won a case against Ellis Pinsky (20, but 15 at the time of the heist), the alleged mastermind of the attack, obligating the defendant to award a &#8220;monetary relief&#8221;&nbsp;of $22M to the plaintiff. Pinsky,&nbsp;<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theregister.com\/2022\/10\/15\/pinsky_terpin_sim_swap\/\" target=\"_blank\">whom the media dubbed &#8220;Baby Al Capone<\/a>&#8220;, was a high school student in New York. He&nbsp;<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/culture\/culture-features\/crypto-heist-teenage-hacker-ellis-pinsky-1367400\/\" target=\"_blank\">admitted<\/a>&nbsp;to stealing from Terpin and returned $2M worth of cryptocurrency a year after the heist.<\/p>\n<p>The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) has provided users with an in-depth and thorough list of&nbsp;<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/consumer.ftc.gov\/consumer-alerts\/2019\/10\/sim-swap-scams-how-protect-yourself\" target=\"_blank\">how to&nbsp;protect themselves from SIM swap attacks<\/a>. This includes limiting the personal information you share online and considering using a more robust form of 2FA (two-factor authentication), such as using one-SIM&nbsp;passcodes instead of text message verification. All major US phone carriers also urge their clients to assign a PIN code to their accounts to prevent social engineering tactics geared towards customer support employees.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><strong>We don&#8217;t just report on threats&mdash;we remove them<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Cybersecurity risks should never spread beyond a headline. Keep threats off your devices by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.malwarebytes.com\/for-home\">downloading&nbsp;Malwarebytes today<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.malwarebytes.com\/blog\/news\/2022\/12\/sim-swapper-jailed-for-18-months-over-crypto-heist\" target=\"bwo\" >https:\/\/blog.malwarebytes.com\/feed\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<table cellpadding=\"10\">\n<tr>\n<td valign=\"top\" align=\"left\">\n<p>Categories: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.malwarebytes.com\/blog\/category\/news\" rel=\"category tag\">News<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Tags: SIM swapping<\/p>\n<p>Tags:  cryptocurrency heist<\/p>\n<p>Tags:  Bitcoin<\/p>\n<p>Tags:  TRIG<\/p>\n<p>Tags:  Ellis Pinsky<\/p>\n<p>Tags:  Damian Williams<\/p>\n<p>Tags:  Nicholas Truglia<\/p>\n<p>Nicholas Truglia from Florida has been sentenced to 18 months for aiding threat actors in a crypto heist against a popular cryptocurrency personality.<\/p>\n<table width=\"100%\">\n<tr>\n<td align=\"right\">\n<p><b>(<a href=\"https:\/\/www.malwarebytes.com\/blog\/news\/2022\/12\/sim-swapper-jailed-for-18-months-over-crypto-heist\" title=\"SIM swapper jailed for 18 months over crypto heist\">Read more&#8230;<\/a>)<\/b><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<p>The post <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.malwarebytes.com\/blog\/news\/2022\/12\/sim-swapper-jailed-for-18-months-over-crypto-heist\">SIM swapper jailed for 18 months over crypto heist<\/a> appeared first on <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.malwarebytes.com\">Malwarebytes Labs<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[10488,10378],"tags":[10490,28085,28088,28087,32,20686,19232,28086],"class_list":["post-20756","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-malwarebytes","category-security","tag-bitcoin","tag-cryptocurrency-heist","tag-damian-williams","tag-ellis-pinsky","tag-news","tag-nicholas-truglia","tag-sim-swapping","tag-trig"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20756","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20756"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20756\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}