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Joel Ortiz, a skilled SIM Swapper was caught and arrested back in May 2018. On April 22nd 2019, the District Attorney’s Office of Santa Clara County made their formal announcement about his sentence – 10 years in prison.

Ortiz was a 21-year-old Boston High School valedictorian and was very prolific at stealing cryptocurrency from SIM cards. The announcement states that he had hacked the crypto wallets (worth over $7.5 million) located on mobile phones of over 40 victims.

According to the announcement, it only took Ortiz just a few minutes to steal more than $5.2 million in crypto from one Cupertino cryptocurrency entrepreneur. He performed this theft back in May of 2018.

https://www.bitcrypt.co/tech-savvy-student-steals-millions-cryptocurrency/ (https://www.bitcrypt.co/tech-savvy-student-steals-millions-cryptocurrency/)

Ortiz was a smart hacker and yet I don't admire him because he spent all the money with worthless things. That was too huge and he just spent it with his friends. He's too young and will be spending 10 years in prison, I pity him but I guess he should pay for what he did. That's the reason why we have to handle our mobile numbers well. Hackers could do anything by just using our personal numbers.

I'm not surprised by his skill but by the few targets in which he managed to steal $7.5 million worth in crypto from. I mean, who are these people he stole from? Are they some sort of high-profile individuals and didn't notice that they have been robbed? That's why it's highly important for people to be very vigilant at all times because at this day and age, it's incredibly easy to steal private information from other people. It's a shame though that the dude will be spending time behind bars instead of just honing his craft outside and being clean. He could have made a lot of fortune without being watched by the government by being a security consultant or anything that involves security.

Savvy and tech savvy are two very different things. Incredibly stupid of him to flash the cash.

It's also incredible that this is still possible through phone companies. Idiots base their entire lives around their phones. Security surrounding their interaction with customers services should be rock solid. I seem to recall someone looking into a lawsuit about them giving the SIM away. I wonder what became of that.

One more incredibly stupid for any crypto fan who trusts a phone company as well.

Ortiz is among those who have been attacking and hacking exchanges all over, how can you steal another man hard earned money and spending it at night club's and buying of useless items until only $400,000 left from the total of $7.5 million Worth of cryptocurrency you stole from your victims.

He's good but didn't used his knowledge in the right way, this news should be remembered and be a basis for traders and investors who's keeping their assets in some places which is prone for hackers attention, we should firstly take a bunch of care with every single information about our investment, he deserved what he needed to fill inside the prison cell.

Took him minutes to steal but will take him 10 years on prison cell. He be spending 10 years of his life wondering how he could have avoided getting caught. Such a waste when a valedictorian should have concentrate on his studies. If he still have his coins in a safer place, he still could be a millionaire when he is out though, BTC might just be worth $50K.

It's actually pretty crazy how vulnerable 2-factor authentication can be if someone has the means to change or access SIM cards. Not to say that it's easy to exploit the vulnerabilities with 2FA, because it makes it much harder for someone to access your stuff across the board, but there's always some way to break the system.

Either way, it's fraud and he deserves it. You can't justify taking money from other people regardless of how elaborate your scheme is to get past all the checks and balances preventing you from doing so. Considering he took so much crypto from that one entrepreneur, that was likely what did him in and finally got some authorities on his case. I don't think he'll be able to keep the money, but if he somehow tucked it away then a $5m payout isn't half bad for 10 years of your life. Too bad it'll be behind bars.

This proves Crime never pays and always Fail. Being such a smart and intelligent Guy, if he had utilized his brain in something constructive then people would have respected him and loved him.

Now, he will stay in that jail for 10 years. Thinking why he did that crime.

That is the interesting part. He must have carefully analyzed these particular individuals over a specific period of time and performed the theft in a smart manner without anyone noticing until now.

They acquired $400k from him and it looks like the rest has already been spent or well hidden. Good riddance.

Ruined 40 lives(actually more probably) He will die and live their life and steal from himself LOL, 10 years is not that long, who makes 7.5 million in 10 years, even in the western world most people make $40,000 a year that is 187 years he should serve. He should be hung or at least forced to work until all the debt is returned just like the bankers owe us for tax. He ruined 40 lives his deserves his to be ruined. I know two wrongs do not make a right, But you should get what you deserve.

to young? he is 21 dood. You are considerd a adult at 16 here in Canada. I got kicked out when I was 16 I became a man real quick.

I'm still thinking on how it is possible through SIM cards but this guy made it so there should be some backdoor or negligence from the SIM card/phone company.

It's probably all about the money.

if you even bother to click on the url link and read the article, you would know how he did it
he's impersonating the owner of the sim card and contacting sim provider for a replacement card
this seems like a well planned hack on a targeted victim :-X
the question is how he found out the information about the user, his account and his phone number

Can anyone explain me how is it possible to steal crypto from SIM card?
So stealing money from other people in order to spend it for good purpose totally advocates this crime in your eyes?
For some reason many hackers think that if they steal electronic money then no one would be looking for them. The same thing happened many years ago when many scammers were happy to steal some money via PayPal and for some time no one has been arresting them but then everyone understood that those kind of crimes is not that safe.

It is a pity that such an intelligent person has spent his gift on stealing money from other people, and then also, by his own stupidity, to go to prison for 10 years in the prime of his life. Smart people are also be an idiots. Many people think that fast money can give us independence and prosperity, but as practice shows, easy money often brings only unhappiness to their owners. All this is sad. I hope that after this guy gets out of prison, he will be able to change his life to something better, and the prison will not break him.

It sounds like he used his smarts for the wrong things. He could have made a lot more money in the space by building rather than stealing, since there is such a strong demand for developers. Perhaps while serving his 10 year sentence he will learn he took the wrong path.

Cryptocurrency enthusiasts should aim to become immune to this vulnerability, by using hardware wallets and other means.

I wouldn't say he is a smart hacker! What he has done is illegal and must be penalized for that! It really doesn't matter how he spent his money, but the money certainly doesn't belong to him! He is a thieve and I will call him that only! It is a lesson to us to make sure that we don't keep valuable things in our mobile phones which can be easily hacked by some hooligans like Joel. It's because of some hackers like Joel, the entire hackers community gets a bad reputation! No one should try to glorify such act!

$7.5m on exchange wallets of 40 victims  ::) Stealing cryptocurrencies must be easier if you have physical access to such devices, think about anonymity. He could get caught, it's okay.

But: ''Ortiz wasted the money lavishly on things such as...'' He could easily disappear without a trace with coins laundered. Just a hacker..

If he was caught he was not smart. He might be tech savvy and can hack stuff, but financials and planning are not his forte obviously.

He got off too lightly for the amount of money he stole.  He will probably only end up serving 5 or 6 years as well.

This guy ruined peoples lives permanently and just blew their money on stupid shit.  This guy deserves a harsher punishment.

Absolutely, and it's very sad to see the guy gets adored for his "smarts", apparently by people that don't know what smart exactly means. I suspect his victims are considerably smarter if they made that kind of money in a legitimate way while contributing to society, regardless of them maybe being less tech-savvy.

Just having some tech skills, or being aware of some vulnerabilities doesn't make you smart.

It's disappointing that there are people like Ortiz who would hack the earnings of others just to sustain his life. He deserves to be in jail and I pity the victims more than him. We all know how hard it is to earn bitcoin these days and losing our investments would lead us to depression. I have my sympathy for the victims.

Just like any criminals out there, they usually "case" their victims, stalking them for weeks or even months and then take that one shot to steal your money under your nose.


Yeah, good riddance. He has the talents, unfortunately, he didn't put it to good use but instead chooses the life of a criminal and now he is behind bar.

By and large, he stole the entire amount from only one rich man.The theme of the post is perceived by everyone as if everyone should admire a young student who was able to steal the money.But in fact, this student could spend time with sense and direct their skills in the right and legitimate direction.And so all these skills will remain with him for another 10 years ....

No sane person will admire a fraudulent act no matter how smart and skillful the perpetrator may be, Ortiz among other scammers can as well channelled this skills into developing something that will better the lots of our security challenge's today and help preventing such occurrence and safe potential victims and the world will celebrate the skillfulness.

I think he got what he deserved. It's not okay to steal money, even if you're a smart hacker. It's nice that he was convicted of his crime, even though it involved cryptos, not fiat. If he is just 21, he will still have time to live ab interesting life after prison. Maybe he'll use his abilities for good next time. After all, rethinking one's principles is what being in prison is partially about.

He might get a lesson learned after being sentence to be in prison for a more than a decade.After that he might either change his motives in life or would still continue the hacking but more careful this time.
He do wasted up his talent rather than using it on blackhat it would be better if he do apply for something else which is legal. Each theft/hacking case would really have corresponding consequences.
For the age of 21 which is too young to get in prison but it is just right.

Stealing cryptos using SIM cards is not a problem with cryptos. But that the cryptos could solve. In Brazil this practice of crimes is being done using whatsapp. The victim's cell phone is cloned and the thief asks for money from close friends as if he were the victim.

SIM cards are not reliable. Your mobile number can not be your only 2fa method as it can be easily cloned or stolen.

This is the reason that i personally wouldn't want to store bitcoin on my phone.

When Ortiz was arrested, law enforcement groups investigating IT crimes only managed to confiscate $ 400,000. I read some written media in the announcement, Joel Ortiz after committing his crime. he spent the illicit money on club parties, expensive clothes, etc., and even hired a helicopter to get to a music festival, this was really crazy what he did.

Another life to be wasted in prison, I thought he was intelligent I wonder he doesn’t know the consequences of he’s doings. Well its unfortunate for the victims to get hacked that easy they’ve been hacked thousand or millions but couldn’t provide a decent storage for their digital assets.

What a bad person, why people like to take shortcut to make them rich, he should be sentences to dead, imagine how people saved the crypto then suddenly being stolen, I don't think the criminal had spend all the crypto, it's hidden in a very secure place and something like this that makes the people and the government got a negative label on crypto

Such a great talent and genius can be put to use for the benefit of the cryptocurrency industry. How I wish that instead of victimizing other people, he could have put up his own fintech company offering many good services and products for the whole industry to enjoy. Anyway, he is still young and he can spent 10 years in jail sharpening his skills and I am hope this time around with legitimate activities that can make his own parents, friends and relative so proud. This is a great reminder to people of the same skills and talent to use them well...

Yeah . instead of hacking why cant he just create his own company and form his own team ?  He can contribute in the crypto community while he can help other people at the same time .  or what if he can just apply for a job on the blokchain crypto field ?  I think he will get easily accepted due to his amazing talent and skills but its too late because he already done a serious crime  .



How can he sharpen his skills inside a jail ?  I know that there are no computers and gadgets allowed inside a jail  . not unless he is in special treatment or he have a connection inside the jail or he can be able to pay huge amount of sums for a special treatment .

This is ridiculous and undeserving. For a 21years old to be using his tech skill for the wrong operation. $7.5M is a huge cash to dare with. This is why securing our fund should be consider very important and never to loos guard in any security feature possible.

I appreciate Joel Ortiz tech skills, Its not easy to hack crypto wallets of 40 people and that too for this high amount but he used his skills for the wrong cause and for this reason he has waste his 10 precious years in jail. If he could have used his skills in positive manner then he might have opened his first door towards success. Stealing someone's hard earned money is a crime and Joel Ortiz has to pay for that.

basically this.

however google auth 2fa is not related to a sim. clone or take my phone number and you do not get the google auth seed so its useless. if the phone is physically stolen, one needs to have the phone wipe itself, either automatically or via software command. lots of ways to do that.

so if my phone is cloned or lost or whatever i just get a new phone, manually load the google auth seed for the various sites from the paper backups i made (and get a new seed by turning 2fa off then on again if needed. that gives a new seed) and im on my way. google auth runs on computers and tablets also so i can do the 2fa seed reset with pretty much any device.

You guys didn't read more than 3 lines of that article, did you?

Do you know what a SIM Swapper is? A guy that goes to a phone company office and tries with a convincing story to have the victim's sim card replaced and handed to him. Then he uses that sim card to have all the passwords of the victim's social media accounts or exchange reset and takes control over them.

There is no "hacking", no "tech-savvy" , he is at the same level as a guy trying to sell snake oil to some morons.

 

lol well his sob story to the phone company is working and so they replaced the sim. they find it very tech savvy.  :D

he took an easy route to get millions though, $7M is a lot of money for a student. a house of his own, car, girls and party must have all he got.

I had to read the article after you said "stole crypto currencies from SIM card". I was like, how the hell does someone steal crypto currencies from SIM card. It's not like you can store your coin in a SIM card! But, then yeah, he used victims SIM card to have access to their account.
Sad people are not aware of security. I wonder where have they saved all these huge amount of coins that could be stole by having access to only their phone number...

If he could have used his skills to make a better world rather than doing these kind of activity he could have made a better living in terms of his career and his life, technology can be used for good as well as bad and it depends upon an individual morality on what he does with his skills and there is nothing wrong in locking him behind bars for his acts, as every action does have a consequence so that it will be a precedent for everyone to view in the future so they will not do those activities .

Most students nowadays can learn simple hacking skills in their computer science class.
Some of their professors even encourage it for the reason of learning from it.
Although they believe it will be used for white hat purposes and not causing any harm to networks or stealing funds from banks or exchanges in this case.

Well,that's what happens when people are not careful and do not care about their phone's security thinking no one would break into their wallets. I don't know if it is people's fault or phone companies fault for not taking care of the security of their clients sin cards because there was obviously a trick this hacker found out about and was able to break into the security of those phone companies to access the sim cards.

it's not about "their phone's security" nor "people's fault" nor "security of their clients sim cards"
this is the negligence of the phone company worker in handing replacement sim card to an unrightful owner
you completely misunderstood the story here or did not read the article
stompix explanation should clear up your misconception on this "hacking" story

I agree - SIM jacking is not "tech savvy". It is a confidence trickster.

It is on par to stealing someones car by fooling the valet parking attendant into giving you the keys.


It is also foolish to tie your accounts to a phone number. Using text or email as your 2FA is like locking your house and leaving a note on the door reminding where the backup key is hidden.

Txt is not secure - it can be intercepted. With companies greedily trying to steal customers from other providers and service providers hiring people that are not aware of how much is at stake when they give a phone number to the wrong person - phone numbers are not secure.

Porting a number to another phone is relatively easy if you have certain information.

There are whole websites dedicated to phone jacking and stealing social media accounts for profit.

I think that he got away with a relatively light sentence. He destroyed the lives of so many people, and if I was the judge then I should have given a life without parole. Now he'll be out of prison after max 7-8 years and once he is free he is going to convert all his hidden coin stash to USD and then live comfortably like a king somewhere in Mexico (it looks like he is of Mexican descent, but not being a xenophobe here). As far as I know, the authorities were unable to recover all of his stolen coins.

Not good enough if you are caught. Best steals are those that become legendary like D.B. Cooper -> never identified or captured.  8)

I think he knew what he was doing, because the theft is huge and there are millions of $.Accordingly, the term given is not small, of course sorry for the guy, still young, but all equal before the law.

D B Cooper may not have survived the parachute jump either.

Paper wallets do not need mobile phone access and you can use my SIM card as much as you want, because you will never get to my main hoard.  ;) The people who rely 100% on hot wallets to store their coins are simply stupid or uninformed about the dangers of doing that.

Yes, it might not be practical to sweep coins every time you want to use it, but it is much safer than having all your coins on hot wallets.  ::) I also store those paper wallets in 4 different locations for better security. <No use having your main hoard in one place.>  ::)