Four UK victims lost almost £200,000 in crypto to a SIM-swap ring

Criminals stole almost £200,000 ($264,200) in cryptocurrency from four people after hijacking their phone numbers, and a London man who helped run the scheme was jailed for two and a half years on Thursday, the City of London Police said.

Unauthorized activity on BT’s systems in 2021 was the start of the case.

Shinjin kept more than £44,000 and spent it in Dubai

Ajay Shinjin, 25, aka AJ Marley Cruz, pocketed more than £44,000 ($58,124) of the stolen funds. Investigators said he spent it on holidays in Dubai, a luxury flat in Canary Wharf and gold-plated teeth grills.

Shinjin, of Marsh Wall in Canary Wharf, pled guilty to conspiracy to commit fraud by false representation and transferring criminal property on September 28. The sentence was passed at Inner London Crown Court.

A SIM swap puts the victim’s phone number on a SIM card controlled by a criminal. Once criminals have the number, they glean the one-time passcodes that banks and crypto exchanges send by text to break into accounts.

In early November 2021, BT detected unauthorized activity on its systems. Criminals had transferred customer numbers to their SIM cards.

Telecom traced the devices receiving those numbers, eSIM-enabled handsets with two IMEI numbers each. BT’s data pointed police to several suspects, and Shinjin was connected to four of the devices.

One theft drained £130,000 worth of crypto

Police discovered four victims of stolen crypto in November 2021. One lost about £40,000 ($52,840) on November 2 and about £27,000 of that went into Shinjin’s personal crypto account.

The second victim’s entire loss of ~£17,000 ($22,457) from November 5 to 7 was later found in Shinjin’s wallet. A third had about £8,000 ($10,568) taken from a Coinbase account on November 3 and police said Shinjin facilitated that theft before the money was passed on.

The heaviest hit fell on a fourth victim, who lost some £130,000 ($171,730) in crypto between November 6 and 7. Police said that Shinjin also facilitated that theft.

Shinjin was arrested for the first time at his flat in 2021. After new evidence surfaced, police arrested him again in October 2023 as he landed at Heathrow Airport from Dubai, and he made no comment in interviews.

“SIM-swap fraud is a sophisticated and increasingly concerning form of offending, and this case demonstrates the devastating consequences it can have for victims,” said Detective Constable Simon Ardeman of the City of London Police. Ardeman added that the conviction demonstrates technology-assisted fraud can be investigated and prosecuted.

The conviction came more than four years after the thefts were reported. In May, Cryptopolitan reported that ten people in England were charged in connection with a phone scam where callers allegedly posed as police officers and employees of a crypto company to obtain wallet seed phrases, with at least one victim losing £300,000.

FBI and Homeland Security Investigations assisted cybercrime police in arresting four suspects in Poland on June 25. The quartet are accused of conducting SIM-swap attacks to drain cryptocurrency exchange accounts.