According to the NY Post, on November 14, 2018, 21-year-old Nicholas Truglia, who stole cryptocurrency totaling about $1 million, was detained. He is currently in custody and is awaiting shipment to Santa Clara, California, where investigators are waiting for him with an indictment on six more criminal episodes.
The young offender stole $500,000 from the wallet of Robert Ross from San Francisco at Coinbase. He deduced the same amount from the victim’s accounts on the Gemini exchange. This was made possible by cracking the Ross smartphone. Truglia has not invented anything new. He used a scheme with a remote substitution of the SIM card, which gave him full control over the victim’s phone.
Law enforcement agencies worked quite quickly. Less than a month after the crime was reported, experts already managed to return about 300 thousand US dollars to Ross. And this is taking into account the fact that Truglia managed to convert them into various cryptocurrencies several times.
This situation is not so interesting by the crime as the effectiveness of its investigation. As you can see, the United States has developed a fairly good practice of solving crimes involving the theft of crypto. This is an important fact that makes crypto-enthusiasts confident that they have good chances to get protection from law enforcement.
Earlier, Nicholas Truglia himself had hoped for such a defense. In September of this year, he reported that he was forced to transfer the data of his crypto wallet with coins totaling $1.2 million. The veracity of his statement will be established in court.
As a conclusion, we advise you to use smartphones (except blockchain ones) as little as possible when working with a crypto. Any computer equipment can be hacked, but still smartphones are the most unreliable tool to ensure the safety of your funds.
Follow us on Telegram and/or subscribe to our newsletter!
