US District Court charges two individuals for operating fraudulent SIM swap scheme

• The two men, Eric Meiggs and Declan Harrington, gained access to victims’ phones and social media accounts to steal cryptocurrency.
• Those two were attempting to target ten people to steal over $500,000 in cryptos.

The US Department of Justice (DOJ), FBI and IRS recently announced that the US District Court in Boston has charged two individuals for performing a nationwide SIM swap scheme. The two men, Eric Meiggs and Declan Harrington, are accused of highjacking victims’ phones and social media accounts to steal cryptocurrency. 

The DOJ stated that the individuals attempted their fraudulent scheme on executives of cryptocurrency companies. Notably, the executives have “high value” social media account names. As per the Block, Meiggs and Harrington gained access to their victims’ phone numbers and convincing the phone carriers to reassign their numbers to a SIM card that they possessed. The stolen devices and accounts were then used to reset passwords. It…