The College Student Who Stole $7.5M via SIM Swapping

what's up guys uh sat zero here just want to talk about what happened and maybe you guys will be interested on that I realized after speaking with Joel that there was something significantly different about him I don't know if he had any friends in the real world I think it was all online and that's literally how all of this began as I logged in to my cryptocurrency wallet I saw that my entire balance had been drained and I just remember thinking this can't be [Music] real if you're an 18-year-old kid and you just stole $5 million what would you do with that money and the answer is always something dumb these are serious crimes we are watching you we will find you we will convict you and you will go to prison crypto is the new Wild West North Korea's operatives using keyboards rather than guns have become the world's leading bank robbers a magnet for crime and for revolution placed on the FBI's top 10 most wanted list a playground for outlaws and Visionaries a man who's made a fortune in cryptocurrency running for president but can anyone truly control cryptocurrency only a few dare to try [Music] it's head to toe I mean everything he's wearing from hat to slides are Gucci full on Gucci what do you think 20,000 $20,000 for that outfit yeah it almost seems like this is like a rich person's costume right like like if this is Halloween and he's playing the rich guy it's such a display isn't [Music] it cryptocurrency is an absolute game changer in terms of what these young individuals could steal in a way that had never been done before I bought my friends first class tickets on JetBlue mint found an Airbnb house for a month that cost $30,000 and tickets for E3 I was wearing and carrying Gucci products acting like I was the richest in total we attribute $7.2 million theft to Joel Ortiz [Music] [Music] I was speaking at an event with Joe Luben himself who is the founder of consensus which was the largest cryptocurrency conference in the United States and it was a small room but the people there were all Heavy Hitters billionaire investors here in New York unbelievable places I get to go in the crypto community in 2018 cryptocurrency fever is at its peak based on its promise of fast growth accessibility and a future without government regulation crypto conferences crop up all over the country attracting investors and entrepreneurs buying into the hype earlier in the day I checked my cryptocurrency Holdings and I remember the value of the Holdings at that time was as high as it had ever been over $100,000 and I took a screenshot and I sent it to my wife and I remember she you know sent like a smiley face and a heart and then I was walking to a restaurant it was probably 5:00 and I pulled out my phone and it said you know you can't connect to your mail I went to my text messages and I couldn't text and I knew something was wrong I go into my hotel room that evening it's now 10:00 I log into the Wi-Fi in the hotel and I got this notification that said someone had logged into my account from Boston Massachusetts and I thought who the is logging into my account from Boston Joelle was born to a disabled immigrant mother who was on full disability his father was never in the picture it was learned very early in his life that there was something wrong now the diagnosis would be Autism Spectrum Disorder so that's was his starting point when I met Joelle he was 20 years old quiet passive but wanting to please when I was little I built a passion for technology me and my mother would find Electronics in the trash we'd bring them home and I would learn how to fix them I started to learn how to hack when I jail broke my Playstation 3 I met friends online who also had a passion for hacking I never really had friends in school I I don't know if he had any friends in the real world I think it was all online Joel Ortiz was a brainy guy he graduated AS Val dictorian of his class and got a scholarship to UMass and we know that he had skills that were really usable in this way he exploited a vulnerability that I don't think the rest of the nation was really thinking much about cryptocurrency is a risky investment and early adopters and investors accept this risk but no one expects to lose their crypto to the type of scheme Joel is about to unleash the feeling of like oh what's happened here just kind of got progressively worse and the first thing I did was go into my cryptocurrency wallet and as I logged in I saw that my entire balance had been drained and the $100,000 of cryptocurrency Holdings that I had in my e wallet had gone to zero and I just remember thinking this can't be real at some point it just it it sunk in I've been hacked and then I had to call my wife I said it's gone are you sure I said I'm sure how do you know I said because I see the transactions it's on the blockchain it went from my wallet to these other wallets well whose wallets are they I said I don't know it's Anonymous the way this whole system works it's designed to be anonymous and then I wondered what's going to happen next who do you call when you get hacked for cryptocurrency yeah who who do you call I'm here in New York in this hotel I've realized that I've lost $100,000 of cryptocurrency instantaneously and yeah I just remember having this sinking feeling in my heart I felt guilty I felt ashamed I felt naive and I felt embarrassed he doesn't know it but he isn't alone on the other side of the country a team of investigators that specializes in the emerging field of crypto crime is already tracking another heist with a nearly identical Mo to the one that snared Darren cryptocurrency really fell into our lap in March 2018 the victim reported to us that he had lost reception on his phone he was unable to access his social media and his other accounts and then ultimately lost the control of his crypto currency accounts and had lost $10,000 in the heart of Silicon Valley an elite digital task force the first of its kind in the nation is scrambling to keep on top of a new kind of scam we had never heard of this type of network intrusion or cryptocurrency theft so the first thought that came into our mind at react was we we need to get the phone records from AT&T to see what happened and what we start seeing is when he reported that he lost signal in the records we see a different phone and then the cell towers used literally went from Los Altos California to Boston Massachusetts no way a phone could travel that far in a couple minutes the scam discovered by react is called a Sim swap where the hacker bribes or tricks a cell phone carrier employee to redirect the victim phone number to a new handset held by the hacker all calls and messages now go directly to the Hacker's handset this includes all password reset messages like the nowadays all important two Factor authentication and it opens the door for the hacker to take control of all of the victim's accounts so we have the phone that was used by our bad guy to take over the victim's account we wrote a search warrant to Google asking them to identify any accounts that may have been used from this fun the warrant gives Sammy even more than what he hopes for and hands him his suspect on a silver platter so where did you find this so this was in the Joel Ortiz email address we got from Google this was a picture he sent to a crypto exchange identifying himself you've got a picture of your suspect and he's holding identification and this is with in the Google account that you're looking at that's tied to the phone that's correct at this point we don't know what his role is or how responsible he is but we actually know someone who is holding on to this phone that was used in the hack having a named suspect is a huge breakthrough for react the chase is on and they start to gather evidence as fast as they can but meanwhile Joel is racking up victims in the crypto world and crypto conferences aren't the only places he finds them our joke at react was that if you are into crypto you talk about crypto so if you're looking for someone who may have crypto it's as easy as just going on Twitter and searching for a hash Bitcoin or # crypto and they started making lists of hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people and doing their background on who they are what their email addresses are what their phone numbers are and then working up a Target list armed with these personal details Joel Engineers multiple SIM swaps and goes fishing never knowing how much money one victim may have but hoping to catch a well I knew why I was targeted because I'm a CE of company we raised capital from the crypto Market but I never heard of sim swaps as I was driving I saw these messages appear on my phone the message said that my Yahoo password was changed uh and then subsequently Gmail password was changed so I knew that I was being hacked when I came home I went through my cryptocurrencies and they were Sav but there was one wallet which is the Exodus wallet which um was hacked when I saw the Exodus got drained I was shocked can you tell us how much cryptocurrency was taken out of your Exodus wallet yeah so it's about uh the amount was about 5 million Joel hits the crypto jackpot with sesat and with 5 million in his pocket he's ready to live the life he could only dream of while living in his mother's apartment if you're an 18-year-old kid and you just stole $5 million what would you do with that money the answer is always something [Music] dumb he had traveled from Boston to Hollywood and had rented out airbnbs I never realized what a post-party pick this is yeah warning of yeah there's his pool at the Airbnb yeah here's Joel and his juicy Gucci set he comes from a very working class family and really had never gotten to enjoy the spoils that all of a sudden overnight he was enjoying it made a ton of sense that he would want to broadcast that this is him coming in on a helicopter just popping in down there massive stacks of cash part of it that Allure is if you have no real friends in real life no girlfriend no dating money is the quickest way to get it pouring Don perion out on a Rolex $2,000 a bottle my God he was literally an overnight millionaire multi-millionaire and he wanted to show [Music] off all right here we go while Joel is living the High Life the react team dig into all his online records leading to a revelation Joel isn't working alone he's part of a hacker ring that's pulling off massive heists and bragging about it Joel is like splitting the money amongst his cohorts and he's saying hey we have this money let's go to Hawaii let's go to Dubai let's get $50,000 IC watches IC means diamond and crusted watches there's one person person in charge three or four people helping that person and they're communicating the entire time watching what each other's doing often these were young people who had grown up together playing Call of Duty playing other video games but they didn't even really know first names they knew each other by their handles and they're talking about how to launder their money we have this $5 million sitting in this ether wallet my job is going to be to launder that money through exchanges uh so that we can actually spend it without getting caught it's not like these things are scheduled it's sort of a random hodgepodge of who happens to be online at any given time even when you talk to Joel Ortiz I don't think he even remembers like who was involved in each crime that's how random it was it may be random but each Heist is a complex operation requiring the members of the group to take on different tasks from researching a victim to bribing a sell Company employee but Joel's role is key to the whole operation what Joel's role was was he was the one holding the device they would immediately start taking over accounts and saying forgot password and the code would be sent to the phone that Joel was holding so that puts him in control of the whole operation for changing passwords and for being the one actually able to do the account takeovers they'll just go systematically down their list victim after victim after victim and start searching their emails for crypto words and trying to find username and password Combos and then we're talking 10 minutes from SIM swapping to crypto theft at the time I don't think anybody thought that react was going to be able to trace that phone I don't think they thought it through I'm sure that Joel Ortiz didn't think that Sammy terazzi was following him in the way that Sammy was I'm sure he had no idea that Sammy is a terrier and was watching Joel's every move what's up guys uh zero here I'm going to be making a little live stream about what happened yesterday I'm getting ready to go to bed I check my phone to check his at zero account and he posts a new story while Joelle and his friends are living it up in LA and broadcasting their ill-gotten gains they unknowingly leave an obvious trail of social media crumbs for Sammy and react but their big spending also attracts unwanted attention from a more violent kind of criminal it's crazy uh but yesterday I someone like or two black guys came to the house with guns and like pointed at me and my friends I had like $8,000 cash and uh Rolex and a Bitcoin chain just screwed my mind over like I was so scared like just trying like go back to bosson like like I don't know react already has enough evidence to arrest Joel but this live video gives them a when and where they called 911 on one hand this is great there's going to be all this information about who is there and I'm also worried cuz now he's leaving uh and if he leaves we're out of luck in a race against the clock to catch Joel while he's still in react's jurisdiction they find out his flight details and swoop in on LAX he waits in line in security gets to the TSA x-ray machine pops his backpack takes his wallet out and his belt pops it on the X-ray machine he walks through and that's when me and my partner escort him away did you recognize him right away uh yeah I recognized him immediately heavy set teenager and Decked Out Gucci gears hard to miss right there was no resistance he didn't seem shocked but he definitely seemed nervous and scared he had a ledger basically a USB drive that stores crypto which is encrypted with a password he did give us the password which revealed $250,000 of cryptocurrency which is a fraction of what we knew you know $7.5 million that he stolen where's the rest of the money Joel's gang have hidden the trail of most of the stolen cryptocurrency by using the crypto equivalent of money laundering a process called mixing making the task of following the money almost impossible he accounted for probably another $250,000 in excessive spending but there was a huge gap between what he could account for and what we knew he took I can say there's many points that suggest that Joel had no extra money at all I mean is represented by a public defender in this case what it tends to mean is that the folks have no money and he did talk about like hey although I stole $7.5 million I didn't get it all I'm just the guy holding the phone so I'm not the brains behind this operation Joel was absolutely the holder of the phone which makes him the most vulnerable to being caught the Mastermind in each incident doesn't put themselves in that situation they put someone that they think is dumb and vulnerable to fill that role unfortunately it was Joel the ring leader the person who found the target those are the folks that got all the money safe to say millions of dollars are still unaccounted for and we don't know if they gave it to trusted third parties we haven't identified they haven't buried in a forest somewhere and they'll get it when they get out of prison I don't know a little more than 9 months after his arrest Joel receives a lengthy prison sentence a precedent setting win for the prosecution despite an uphill battle to educate the court system about the real value of crypto I remember a very prominent defense attorney boisterously saying this is funny money this isn't even real money and then a judge who's completely unfamiliar with it and trying to explain to them not only is it not funny money the devastation that it has caused these victims is immense and needs to be considered all right session the matter I'd like to start with this afternoon is the matter of people versus Joel Ortiz at sentencing the judge us is what happened um judg Le Us by any standard this is a remarkable case he gave him the max for what he could give him at that point which was 10 years amount stolen was greater than the original value of the uh Great Train Robbery I wanted Joel Ortiz to get a sentence that would make a statement to his community we are watching you we can trace and track what you're doing we will find you we will convict you and you will go to prison not only did we arrest Joel he was the first but it set off a domino effect of evidence to arrest other people a Dublin man who was part of a group of cyber criminals who stole more than $2 million worth of cryptocurrencies from us accounts has been sentenced to almost three years in prison I got an email from the high court of Ireland what they said was we we've arrested an individual named Connor Freeman who was working with Joel Ortiz and he said hey good news and we're ready to wire you out some cash and it was another just surreal moment I said H how much is the wire for about $90,000 I mean I was basically made whole right there Darren is lucky most of the victims don't get any of their stolen money back and it's still out there in the digital world somewhere crypto crime has only expanded since Mr Ortiz was arrested and sent to prison the thievery of cryptocurrency has reached a scale and a volume that has never been seen before these are serious crimes and though they are young people that are committing them the damage is immense Joel Ortiz is not a low-risk individual Joel Ortiz is capable of committing crazy destructive icial crimes it felt like a movie in real life it also felt like Grand Theft Auto playing every day in Los Angeles as fun as it was to live an ostentatious lavish lifestyle it also comes with consequences being locked up changed my life and I'm extremely remorseful about what I've done oh [Music]

Channel: VICE

Views: 596,803

Keywords: Joel Ortiz, LAX arrest, cryptocurrency theft, REACT cybercrime unit, Santa Clara, high school valedictorian, Information Technology student, UMass, Boston public housing, tech-savvy loner, larger criminal community, cybercrime, gucci, documentary, documentaries, docs, interview, culture, lifestyle, world, exclusive, independent, underground, videos, journalism, vice guide, vice.com, vice, vice magazine, vice mag, vice videos, film, short films, movies, sim swapping, crypto, scam

Id: 2rFLGR5hlIA

Length: 22min 38sec (1358 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 14 2024