Eric Meiggs and Declan Harrington, both from Massachusetts, were sentenced to more than two years in prison for stealing cryptocurrency in SIM swapping attacks and hijacking their victims’ social media accounts.
Eric Meiggs, 24, of Brockton was sentenced to two years and one day in prison, while Declan Harrington, 22, of Beverly was sentenced to two years and seven days in prison.
According to court documents, Meiggs and Harrington targeted executives of cryptocurrency companies and others who had significant amounts of cryptocurrency in Coinbase or Block.io wallets, as well as potential victims who controlled high-value Instagram and Tumblr accounts, and then hacked into and took control of the victims’ online accounts in order to obtain valuable items such as cryptocurrency through illegal means such as SIM swapping.
They allegedly stole $200,000 in cryptocurrency from an Arizona resident who communicated publicly with cryptocurrency experts online and $100,000 from a victim in California who had close ties to someone who ran a blockchain-based company, according to court documents.
Another $165,000 in cryptocurrency was stolen from the head of a cryptocurrency project in Illinois, while about $35,000 in crypto assets were stolen from a Nevada victim who owned a Bitcoin ATM network.
The sources for this piece include articles in BleepingComputer.