NJ Man Gets Real Jail Time For Conspiracy to Steal Cryptocurrency

A man from North Jersey has been sentenced to 21 months in prison for conspiring to steal more than $500,000 worth of cryptocurrency from users’ accounts with a cryptocurrency exchange platform.

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Federal authorities say 20-year-old Ebrahem Adeeb of Bayonne previously pleaded guilty to conspiring to commit wire fraud.

According to documents filed in the case,

From October 2020 through May 2021 Adeeb and his conspirators “swapped” the subscriber identity module (SIM) associated with a victim’s phone number for another SIM loaded into a mobile device they controlled in order to access and control the victim’s accounts. Adeeb and his conspirators then sent a password reset request to a digital currency exchange platform, which caused the company to send a password reset link to the victim’s email account. Adeeb and his conspirators then accessed the victim’s email account and account at the currency exchange company and transferred cryptocurrency from the victim’s account to a cryptocurrency wallet they controlled.

Adeeb and his conspirators stole cryptocurrency valued at more than $500,000 at the time of the thefts.

In additional to the prison term, Adeeb was sentenced to three years of supervised release and was ordered to pay $504,418 in restitution.