A federal court in San Francisco issued a preliminary order to seize cryptocurrency and a sports car from the hacker accused of siphoning assets from Silicon Valley companies, according to местные СМИ.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice, from 2016 to 2018 Ahmad Wagafe Hared, known by the alias winblo, along with two associates, used SIM-swapping to hack wallets of unnamed cryptocurrency project executives. The hackers called several victims back to extort them.
At the time the scheme was devised, the defendant was 18 years old.
In 2018, Hared and one of his associates were arrested on charges of computer fraud, theft of personal data and extortion. A verdict in that case has not yet been issued.
Authorities are seeking to seize 119.8 BTC ($5.2 million at the time of the order) and 93 420 XLM ($11,770). In addition, he must surrender the 2017 BMW i8 car purchased with proceeds of the theft. Its purchase price was around $150,000 at the time of purchase.
Earlier in August, Blockchain Capital co-founder and managing partner Bart Stephens filed a lawsuit against an anonymous hacker who stole $6.3 million in various digital assets via SIM-swapping.