Dublin man jailed for $2m cryptocurrency theft

The Circuit Criminal Court in Dublin has sentenced local resident Conor Freeman to prison for stealing more than $2 million in cryptocurrency through SIM-card swapping. The Irish Times reports.

Freeman was part of a six-person criminal group. He checked victims’ email inboxes for information on accounts containing digital assets. The attackers then swapped their SIM cards, gaining passwords to restore access to various platforms.

In total in May 2018 they hacked three cryptocurrency accounts, stealing $100,000, $167,000 and more than $1.9 million. At the time of his arrest Freeman had spent part of his share. He handed over to police an electronic wallet containing the remaining 142.7 BTC and the access keys.

The court sentenced the Dublin resident to two years and eleven months in prison.

Earlier, one Reddit user reported the theft from two addresses of 100,000 BCH and 1,550 BTC. In his view, the attackers gained access to the funds through SIM-card swapping.

Earlier, unknown attackers used a similar method to steal 1.09 BTC from a resident of Moscow.

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