The US Department of Justice, investigating the fact of fraud with cryptocurrencies, sentenced a Californian student from San Diego to payment of compensation and probation.
The Louisiana Attorney's Office for the Eastern District said 21-year-old Richard Yuan Li received three years probation and a $$61,000 fine for cheating SIM cards worth more than $$57,000.
Prosecutors have charged Li with conspiracy to carry out a fraudulent scheme that resulted in the injury of 19 people. A New Orleans investor had digital assets stolen from Binance, Bittrex, Coinbase, Gemini, and Poloniex, and one of Lee's accomplices extorted 100 BTC from the victim.
In their scam, Lee and his accomplices first tricked an Apple representative into sending them an iPhone 8, then "arranged for the victim's phone number to be transferred" to that phone and bypassed security measures to gain access to the files.
In this way, Lee and his accomplices obtained the personal financial information of their potential victims, including bank and cryptocurrency accounts, and other accounts with two-factor authentication.
Li was involved in at least 28 SIM card scams between October and December 2018, according to the Department of Justice. The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Louisiana said Lee's actions constituted federal crimes because the SIM card swaps transmit signals across state lines and are subject to the U.S. Constitution's provisions on interstate commerce.
In the worst case scenario, Lee could receive five years in prison, a fine of $250,000 and 100 hours of community service, so you can say that he was lucky - the authorities did not seem to increase the punishment for such crimes.
Recall that in 2019, cryptocurrency investor Michael Terpin wrote an open letter to the chairman of the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) demanding strong action against mobile phone number fraud.
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