A US federal court has reportedly ordered a SIM hijacker who allegedly stole crypto worth millions of dollars while in his teens seven years ago to surrender the proceeds of his crimes.
According to a from The San Francisco Standard, Ahmad Wagaafe Hared stole digital assets, including Bitcoin (), from cryptocurrency executives and investors living in Northern California alongside two co-conspirators in 2016.
At the time, Hared was reportedly residing in Tucson, Arizona.
The report says that Hared and his co-conspirators would first get their target victims’ personally identifying information. They would subsequently contact wireless carriers and impersonate their victims to get the victims’ phone numbers transferred to a SIM card Hared and his co-conspirators controlled – a type of fraud known as SIM hijacking or SIM swapping.
Once they were in possession of their victims’ phone numbers, Hared and his co-conspirators would then gain access to their victims’ email accounts and other accounts.
And once they had their victims’ email addresses and other accounts under their control, the SIM hijackers would subsequently go on to access their victims’ crypto assets and steal them.
The federal court order now requires Hared to forfeit 119.8 Bitcoin worth $3.09 million, 93,420 Stellar () worth $12,238 and a luxury car, per the report.
Bitcoin is trading at $25,804 at time of writing, while Stellar is worth $0.131.
