US District Court charges two individuals for operating fraudulent SIM swap scheme

• The two men, Eric Meiggs and Declan Harrington, gained access to victims’ phones and social media accounts to steal cryptocurrency.
• Those two were attempting to target ten people to steal over $500,000 in cryptos.

The US Department of Justice (DOJ), FBI and IRS recently announced that the US District Court in Boston has charged two individuals for performing a nationwide SIM swap scheme. The two men, Eric Meiggs and Declan Harrington, are accused of highjacking victims’ phones and social media accounts to steal cryptocurrency.  

The DOJ stated that the individuals attempted their fraudulent scheme on executives of cryptocurrency companies. Notably, the executives have “high value” social media account names. As per the Block, Meiggs and Harrington gained access to their victims’ phone numbers and convincing the phone carriers to reassign their numbers to a SIM card that they possessed. The stolen devices and accounts were then used to reset passwords. It helped them gain access to victims’ online cryptocurrency wallets and private keys.

As per DOJ, around 10 individuals were targeted by Meiggs and Harrington across the US. They attempted and managed to steal more than $500,000 in cryptocurrencies from these individuals.

Fraudulent schemes such as this are quite common in the crypto space. Recently in October, an AT&T user sued the wireless carrier. The customer claimed that AT&T failed to protect his account from a SIM swap that led to a theft of over $1.8 million in cryptocurrencies.