Nicholas Truglia, a 21-year-old New Yorker stole 1 million dollars’ worth of cryptocurrency from Robert Ross, a Silicon Valley angel investor. By SIM Swapping the hacker gained access to the victim’s phone number accounts that led him to $500K each from two separate accounts on Coinbase and Gemini.
SIM Swap is one of the oldest tricks in hacking a user’s account by taking control of their SIM card. The network carrier is fooled into believing that the SIM used by the hacker is actually yours and thus the hacker can gain access to nearly all information about you and your online activities from the network company.
Nicholas had also targeted numerous cryptocurrency executives including Saswata Basu, CEO of oChain, Myles Danielsen, a hedge fund executive and Gabrielle Katsnelson, the co-founder of SMBX. He is now charged with 21 counts of fraud, embezzlement, identity theft and attempted grand theft.
The SIM Swap hack has previously been employed on a number of high-rise investors including a eSports gamer who reported $200K stolen from him and Michael Terpin filed a lawsuit against AT&T over a SIM Swap hack that led him to lose worth $23 million dollars. Nicholas will be extradited to California to serve his sentence but now he is being held at Manhattan Detention Complex