College Student Who Stole More Than $5 Million in Cryptocurrency By SIM Swapping Gets 10 Years in Prison -- First Person To Be Sentenced For the Crime (vice.com) 59
A 20-year-old college student who was accused of stealing more than $5 million in cryptocurrency in a slew of SIM hijacking attacks is the first person to be sentenced for the crime. From a report: A college student who stole more than $5 million in cryptocurrency by hijacking the phone numbers of around 40 victims pleaded guilty and accepted a plea deal of 10 years in prison, Motherboard has learned. Joel Ortiz accepted the plea deal last week, Erin West, the Deputy District Attorney in Santa Clara County, California, told Motherboard during a meeting on Thursday. The authorities believe Ortiz is the first person to be convicted of a crime for SIM swapping, an increasingly popular and damaging hack.
The prosecutors and agents who have been investigating these hacks celebrated the conviction, and said they hope that this will serve as an example for the other alleged criminals who have already been arrested, as well as the ones who have yet to be caught. "We think justice has been served. And hopefully this is a strong message to that community," Samy Tarazi, one of the agents who investigated the Ortiz case, told me. Ortiz is one af a handful of SIM swappers who have been arrested in the last year for hijacking phone numbers and using them to then hack into emails, social media accounts, and online Bitcoin wallets.
The prosecutors and agents who have been investigating these hacks celebrated the conviction, and said they hope that this will serve as an example for the other alleged criminals who have already been arrested, as well as the ones who have yet to be caught. "We think justice has been served. And hopefully this is a strong message to that community," Samy Tarazi, one of the agents who investigated the Ortiz case, told me. Ortiz is one af a handful of SIM swappers who have been arrested in the last year for hijacking phone numbers and using them to then hack into emails, social media accounts, and online Bitcoin wallets.
From the article (Score:4, Informative)
On July 12, police in California arrested a college student accused of being part of a group of criminals who hacked dozens of cellphone numbers to steal more than $5 million in cryptocurrency. Joel Ortiz, a 20-year-old from Boston, allegedly hacked around 40 victims with the help of still unnamed accomplices, according to court documents obtained by Motherboard.
https://motherboard.vice.com/e... [vice.com]
Which sounds a bit more likely but still seems to be missing quite a bit.
Am I supposed to feel sorry ... (Score:5, Insightful)
... because he is a "college kid"?
A thieve is a thieve regardless of the level of education he/she has.
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Re:Am I supposed to feel sorry ... (Score:5, Funny)
Now if you'll excuse me, I've just rearranged my boxen, so I need to update the indice of the coordinates of their vertices...
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Trying to explain to an inquisitive 5 year old why English sucks isn't easy. I hate telling him "well, that's just the way it has always been".
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"not that every language doesn't have it's own intricacies"
Yeah, about that...
Re:Am I supposed to feel sorry ... (Score:5, Insightful)
No, you are supposed to feel sorry that stealing Monopoly money only agreed upon by a relative few people
That's a massive, massive misrepresentation of reality.
*You* clearly don't like bitcoin but that's irrelevant. It has a market cap of 60 billion dollars, about the same as Phillip Morris.
You can equally well level your accusaions against shares in that company. They are paper money, not many people hold them (i.e. the value is agreed by relatively few people) and the organisation is a deeply hateful one.
It doesn't matter though. The money can be got in and out easily and it's REAL money. The guy stole 5 million real dollars whether or not you personally happen to like that kind of value.
If nothing else, feel sorry for the tax dollars being spent on keeping this guy out of society for ten years rather than slapping him with a huge fine and forcing him to work it off.
Your previous argument has no bearing on that. The relative merits of prison vs non custodial sentances is irrelevant to you not liking the money he stole. Shame really because your second point is a much more interesting one, but it's realy overshadowed by the first.
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It's not that I don't like Bitcoin, I just think it's a silly thing that has grown much bigger than it really ought to have.
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It doesn't matter though. The money can be got in and out easily and it's REAL money. The guy stole 5 million real dollars whether or not you personally happen to like that kind of value.
And we can make him give it back and work on rehabilitation.
Making an example of him won't work: criminals aren't deterred by punishment, but rather by the perceived likelihood of getting caught. Harsher punishments don't reduce crime.
Even if it did, harsh punishment as an example to others is inflicting harm upon someone for purpose other than their own transgression, which is the opposite of justice, so much as one could call punishment "justice" in the first place. It's like gangraping some guy's
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It doesn't matter though. The money can be got in and out easily and it's REAL money. The guy stole 5 million real dollars whether or not you personally happen to like that kind of value.
And we can make him give it back and work on rehabilitation.
He should be sentenced to do the hashing math of mining new bitcoins by hand until he has mined enough to repay his debt ;P
Re:Am I supposed to feel sorry ... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Meanwhile, the "Wall Street" mob is still free ...
Considering that crypto-currency is not a legal form
of currency, (IOWs, I can't pay my mortgage in bit-coin)
what was the statue that was broken?
CAP === 'domicile'
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Even if what you steal is Monopoly money, the value basis for classifying a crime is the amount in local fiat, dollars in this case, that it trades for.
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And more importantly: the value has nothing to do with the punishment.
It gets simpler if the crime is more complex:
a) I break into your house (door not locked) and steal an apple - same as stealing a watch
b) I break into your house --- door locked, I break a window or something --- steal an apple, or a watch, harder crime than a)
c) I break into your house, point a weapon on you and rob (hint rob versus steal versus burglary) an apple, harder crime than a) or b)
It does not matter *what* you take ... how valu
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In the US there are degrees of larceny (theft) that depend on the value stolen. Remember the old Westerns, where stealing a horse got you strung up? The distinction survives today as “grand theft auto” being a more serious clime than stealing smaller amounts of money-equivalent or items less critical to daily existence.
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But why lock him up for ten years instead of trying to have him be part of society? It's not like he killed or maimed someone, he took some NUMBERS that a bunch of people claim have value - originally based on some guy (whose identity is still a mystery) saying, "Because I say so."
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But why lock him up for ten years instead of trying to have him be part of society?
Because it is in gods own country.
Their criminal laws are just ridiculous.
he took some NUMBERS that a bunch of people claim have value - originally based on some guy (whose identity is still a mystery) saying, "Because I say so."
That is irrelevant. The value or perceived value of what he took has nothing to do with it.
He frauded dozens or hundreds of people with SIM swapping. Does not matter at all for what purpose he did t
Suicide solution (Score:1)
He'd be better off pulling a Swartz and corpseifying himself. Supposing he lasts 10 hours, let alone 10 years, in prison without dying as a result of brutalization, he will end up a human toilet. Out of prison the human toilet will never find a job and will have to exist in abject poverty. Better off swartzed.
the most shocking bit of this (Score:3, Interesting)
Just yesterday I was reading an article about a man in Washington, DC who violently sexually assaulted unknown women on the street. He was finally caught moments after one red-handed with the scratches on his face from his fighting back and her phone in his possession. He confessed to the other crimes. Zero question of his guilt.
He got 10 DAYS in jail. Which they let him serve in 2 day stints so that he wouldn't lose his job as a chef.
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Yes I know. we live in an odd world, but then always has been. The left wants to believe no one should be in prison and the right wants to profit from it. I was talking to someone from Iran (not Muslim) and we were talking about punishment for murder. His response was there can only be one punishment, you took a life, you forfeit yours. I'd say castrate the guy in this case and I don't mean chemical. Og and I'd say it starts in schools now. Friend told me about a girl how pulled a knife on another girl at h
Subsidized education (Score:2)
10 years in prison is just long enough for this kid to get a Ph.D. in telecommunications technology, and spend a few years working on and patenting a method for allowing phone calls without being so hilariously insecure and vulnerable to tampering. Capitalism at its finest. Guard the kingdom with a wooden fence, and make it a capital crime for approaching the fence.
Fools (Score:2)
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And Then (Score:2)
Cryptocurrency without crypto (Score:2)
Nobody holding their private keys had this problem. Nobody using cryptographically-secure 2FA had this problem.
He's obviously a thief but I do wish centralized exchanges were obsolete already.
when data is not an option (Score:2)
When data is not an option, loud optics about "messaging" are a flatfoot's best friend.
Messaging in law enforcement is the body language of professional sports.
Deterrence (Score:1)
The prosecutors and agents who have been investigating these hacks celebrated the conviction, and said they hope that this will serve as an example for the other alleged criminals who have already been arrested ....
Seems to me it's a bit late to deter people from committing crimes after they've already been arrested. But surely the "prosecutors and agents" know what they're doing.
Good thing it was prosecuted by California (Score:2)
This has gone too far (Score:2)
10 years is too much (Score:3)
Yes he is a thieve and deserves a punishment. 10 years however is insane. It may fit with the other extremely harsh sentencing culture in the US, but that doesn't make it right. In the Netherlands, he would get 1 year, at most. Yet the crime rate is much lower, the prisons are emtpy, and the whole prison system is much cheaper and mainly directed towards rehabilitation. A system that locks away people for so long is sick IMHO.