As per a report from The New York Post, a 21-year-old con man from Manhattan was able to steal about $1 million in cryptocurrency with his SIM-swapping scheme.
The young man, named Nicholas Truglia, performed these activities from his apartment. He targeted and robbed Robert Ross, a Silicon Valley executive, according to the officials.
For those who don’t know, the SIM-swapping hacking technique involves a notorious person persuading the customer care representatives to port a number to his/her device. As soon as this happens, the hacker gets access to 2FA codes and is able to get all the information related to different accounts.
Truglia was able to wipe out two accounts of Ross — each of them contained $500,000 cryptocurrency. It’s being reported that the combined total was his entire life savings. Truglia managed to convert the cryptocurrency to his own account.
It’s worth noting that Truglia was also targeting 5 other executives from the area as well, but he wasn’t able to score anything from others. However, he was able to hack their smartphones.
The authorities were also able to recover $300,000 from a hardware cryptocurrency wallet found in his apartment.
This isn’t Truglia’s first encounter with law enforcement; back in September, he called the police on his 4 friends, and accused them of forcing him to reveal his cryptocurrency wallet credentials.
