Florida Man Jailed for $1M Crypto SIM Swap Scam

SIM Swapping Operation Timeline
How SIM Swapping Works?
Method and Results
Theft and Fund Division
Connection to Scattered Spider
Scattered Spider Background

Orlando, Florida – A 20-year-old Florida man, Jordan Persad, has been sentenced to 30 months behind bars for his role in a SIM-swapping ring that stole nearly $1 million in cryptocurrency from dozens of victims. Jordan Persad, of Orlando, was also ordered to pay $945,833 in restitution. He pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit computer fraud on May 1.

SIM Swapping Operation Timeline

According to a plea agreement reached with US prosecutors, between at least March 2021 and September 2022, Persad and his co-conspirators, some he only knew by their online handles, used SIM swapping to siphon funds from their marks.

How SIM Swapping Works?

What’s interesting is that this kind of thing is usually done by convincing a victim’s mobile carrier to reassign the mark’s cellphone number to the SIM in the scammer’s phone. With that done, the criminal can request password resets for the victim’s various online accounts; the one-time verification codes in text messages to authenticate and change the login details are sent to the thief rather than the victim’s handheld, allowing the accounts to be hijacked.

Method and Results

The crook typically gains control of a victim’s email first via this method, and once in their inbox, resets more account passwords via email (or SMS) until the thief can get into things like their victim’s cryptocurrency wallets hosted by exchanges.

In Persad’s case, his process was described in a slightly different albeit not necessarily sequential order. In a statement, prosecutors said he “hacked into victims’ email accounts, hijacked their cell phone numbers, and gained unauthorized access to their online cryptocurrency accounts.

Theft and Fund Division

The crew then divided the illicit proceeds from the scam among themselves. In total, the crooks stole at least $950,000 from their victims, and Persad says he personally kept about $475,000 from the fraud. According to the US Justice Department, FBI investigators recovered some of these funds when they executed search warrants at Persad’s Orlando home.

Connection to Scattered Spider

This type of scam, as well as its timing, seems to follow the Scattered Spider playbook. The Register asked the US Attorney’s Office in Phoenix, Arizona, which prosecuted the case, if Persad is connected to this loose-knit group of cybercriminals and did not receive a response.

Scattered Spider Background

Scattered Spider is the Lapsus$-like, English-speaking gang of teens and early 20-somethings that got their cybercrime start with SIM swapping and email and SMS phishing attacks in 2022 before branching into ransomware and extortion.

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