Nine Sim Swappers Arrested and charged with fraud in the UsByBill Toulas-May 11, 2019.202 Sim numbers were partnered by the scammers and online accounts were stealed. Net returns in cryptocurrencies are valued at about $2.4 million for the entire group. Eight Americans and one Irishman were arrested and charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, supposedly belonging to the same gang of Sim Swapping scammers called “The Family.” Each of the defendants is now facing a maximum penalty of twenty years in prison, and considering the judicial precedent they are unlikely to fall below ten years. The act of Sim swapping is one that is strictly punished by the courts for its highly deceitful nature and the resulting profits the fraudsters enjoy. “The Group” has allegedly made more than $2.4 million in cryptocurrency in this particular case, after extorting their victims to give them back access to their various online accounts. The entire idea of Sim swapping is to trick the victim’s mobile phone operator agent into porting the number to another Sim that the scammer owns. If the intruder can provide information verifying the victim’s identity the confirmation process will go well and the Sim switching can take place. From there on the scammer uses 2Fa to gain access to all online accounts of the victim changing the login credentials and then asking for a ransom to return the accounts to the victim. The accused people charged with Sim swapping are: Colton Jurisic (Forza) 20 Iowa Ricky Joseph Handuschumacher 25 Florida Conor Freeman 20 Dublin Reyad Gafar Abbas 19 New York Garrett Endicott 21 Missouri Robert Jack 22 Arizona Fendley Joseph 28 California Which means the process of having to convince the operator that you are who you claim to be (the rightful owner of the Sim number) was totally thrown out of the window. If that is the case then what are you going to do to defend yourself? Call your carrier today, and inquire what measures are in place to minimize the risk of Sim swapping fraudulently. Others provide an optional confirmation stage, others may trigger an additional passcode step, while others may provide a post validation feature. If you use 2Fa based on Sms to secure valuable accounts consider your options and choose one that suits you.