Hackers steal about $784,000 in crypto from a crypto company via SIM swapping

British resident Joseph James O’Connor, also known as PlugwalkJoe, has been charged in connection with a fraud scheme that resulted in assets stolen from a cryptocurrency company totaling around $784,000 at the time of the theft. The U.S. Department of Justice said.

According to investigators, from March through May 2019 O’Connor and associates orchestrated a SIM-swapping scheme and stole crypto assets from a U.S. company that provides infrastructure for a cryptocurrency wallet and Bitcoin exchanges. Its name is not disclosed.

In such an attack, the attackers gain control over victims’ phone numbers and access to their messages and calls, enabling them to bypass multi-factor authentication.

O’Connor and his accomplices compromised the device of one of the firm’s executives and drained from clients’ wallets around 770 BCH, 6,363 LTC, 407 ETH and more than 7 BTC.

The stolen assets were laundered, and some were exchanged for bitcoins through cryptocurrency exchanges. A portion of the funds ended up in O’Connor’s account on a crypto exchange.

In July he was arrested in Spain on suspicion of involvement in the hacking of numerous celebrity Twitter accounts.

Earlier ForkLog reported that a California resident lost $27 000 in Bitcoin due to a SIM swap.

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