20-year-old Joel Ortiz, a student from Boston, was arrested in California in July. He was accused of involvement in a gang which hacked into the mobile phone numbers and stole more than $5 million in bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies.

According to Motherboard, Ortiz and his co-conspirators hacked into about 40 mobile numbers. Among the victims groups were wealthy cryptocurrency investors who participated in the may conference Consensus 2018. In may, Ortiz allegedly stole more than $1.5 million from a businessman from the scope of the blockchain. Stealing someone else’s phone number, the criminals contact the mobile operator and, posing as the legitimate owner, said the loss of phone and asked to link the number to another SIM card.

Through the telecommunications company AT&T investigators were able to obtain the ID numbers of mobile phones (imeis) used by the group. Detectives were also able to access the email accounts associated with smartphones on the basis of which they have proved the fact that criminal activity of Ortiz and his associates. On platforms such as Binance, Coinbase and Bittrex, cyber criminals managed to transfer more than $1 million

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