A Palm Coast man has been sentenced to a decade in federal jail for his function in a nationwide cryptocurrency hacking scheme that defrauded victims out of tens of millions of {dollars}.
Senior U.S. District Decide Harvey E. Schlesinger sentenced 20-year-old Noah Michael City, who glided by aliases together with “King Bob,” “Sosa,” “Elijah,” and “Gustavo Fring,” to 10 years in jail on expenses of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire fraud, and aggravated id theft. City was additionally ordered to forfeit $4.8 million in property — together with cryptocurrency and different property — and to pay $13 million in restitution. He pleaded responsible in April.
In response to court docket data, City and others carried out focused cyberattacks between August 2022 and March 2023. Their techniques included “SIM swapping,” wherein hackers achieve management of a sufferer’s telephone quantity to entry private information and cryptocurrency accounts. City used stolen private data to hack into digital wallets, in the end stealing cryptocurrency from not less than 59 victims throughout the nation.
Prosecutors stated City’s group additionally focused firm staff with phishing textual content messages to steal login credentials. Utilizing that entry, they obtained private company information and leveraged it — together with leaked datasets — to interrupt into further cryptocurrency accounts and steal tens of millions extra.
The FBI searched City’s residence and found proof linking him to victims’ accounts, in addition to $4.8 million in stolen cryptocurrency saved on his units. In complete, investigators decided the group prompted losses exceeding $13 million.
The case was investigated by the FBI. It was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Lawyer John Cannizzaro of the Center District of Florida and Assistant U.S. Lawyer Lauren Restrepo of the Central District of California.
