SIM Hijacking SIM Swapping
A sixth member associated with an international hacking group known as The Community has been sentenced in connection with a multimillion-dollar SIM swapping conspiracy, the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) said.
Garrett Endicott, 22, from the U.S. state of Missouri, who pleaded guilty to charges of wire fraud and aggravated identity theft following an indictment in 2019, was sentenced to 10 months in prison and ordered to pay an amount totaling $121,549.37 in restitution.
SIM swapping, also called SIM hijacking, refers to an identity theft scheme wherein malicious parties persuade phone carriers into porting their victims’ cell services to SIM cards under their control, often facilitated by bribing an employee of a mobile phone provider or by contacting the service provider’s customer support by posing as the victim and requesting that the phone number be swapped to a SIM card operated by the group.
The goal is to leverage the phone numbers as a gateway to hijack different online services used by the targets, such as email, cloud storage, and cryptocurrency exchange accounts, by resetting their passwords and one-time verification codes that are sent via SMS messages as part of the two-factor authentication (2FA) process, enabling the cybercrime crew to circumvent security measures.
Members of The Community engaged in Sim Hijacking to steal cryptocurrency from victims across the country, including California, Missouri, Michigan, Utah, Texas, New York, and Illinois
DOJ
Resulting in the theft of cryptocurrency valued, at the time of the theft, ranging anywhere between $2,000 to more than $5 million, from different affected parties.
SIM Hijacking SIM Swapping
