The U.S. Department of Justice is taking steps to seize several million dollars worth of Bitcoin stolen by a teenage hacker from cryptocurrency executives four years ago. Additionally, prosecutors are pursuing the return of a sports car purchased with the ill-gotten Bitcoin.
Recently, a federal judge approved an order requiring Ahmad Wagaafe Hared to surrender $5.2 million in Bitcoin that he pilfered in 2016. This information comes from a report in The San Francisco Standard. The stolen Bitcoin and the sports car were part of a SIM-swapping scheme orchestrated by Hared and two accomplices between 2016 and 2018.
SIM-swapping involves a hacker tricking a cell phone carrier into granting control of a target’s cell phone by posing as the phone’s owner. This tactic is a classic form of social engineering employed by hackers to gain access to personal data, enabling them to steal from their targets or bypass text-message-based two-factor authentication measures.
In 2016, when he was 18 years old and residing in Tucson, Arizona, Hared collaborated with his co-conspirator, Matthew Gene Ditman of Nevada, to deceive customer support representatives at cell phone providers into disclosing information about the SIM cards associated with the accounts of cryptocurrency executives in Northern California. Although the executives are not named, Northern California is home to Silicon Valley and numerous cryptocurrency companies and startups. Coinbase, the largest U.S. exchange, once had its headquarters in San Francisco but has since transitioned to a fully remote company.
Hared was already known on the darknet, where he operated under the username ‘winblo,’ according to independent cybersecurity journalist Brian Krebs. Using this alias, Hared was described as “highly active” and “respected” on an online marketplace where valuable social media accounts were sold.
With some of the stolen funds, Hared purchased a BMW i8, which Krebs reported had an approximate value of $150,000 at the time. Prosecutors alleged in their indictment that after gaining control of their accounts, the two individuals contacted some of their victims in an attempt to extort them further.
The scheme came to an end in 2019 after an FBI investigation identified Hared and Ditman, leading to their arrest. The sentencing of the two individuals has yet to occur.