Three People Indicted In $400 Million FTX Crypto Hack Conspiracy

When FTX filed for bankruptcy in November 2022, the defunct cryptocurrency exchange suffered a hack that resulted in more than $380 million in crypto stolen from FTX's virtual wallets. It turns out that FTX was hit with a SIM-swapping scam orchestrated by ringleader Robert Powell. Powell, along with Carter Rohn and Emily Hernandez, have been indicted and are due to appear in Chicago federal court later Friday for a detention hearing. CNBC reports: The three defendants are charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to commit aggravated identity theft and access device fraud, in a scheme that ran from March 2021 to last April, and involved the co-conspirators traveling to cellphone retail stores in more than 15 states. The indictment says the trio shared the personal identifying information of more than 50 victims, created fake identification documents in the victims' names, impersonated them and then accessed their victims' "online, financial and social media accounts for the purpose of stealing money and data." The scheme relied on duping phone companies into swapping the Subscriber Identity Module of cell phone subscribers into a cellphone controlled by members of the conspiracy, the indictment said. That in turn allowed the conspirators to defeat the multifactor authentication protection on the victims' accounts, giving them access to the money in those accounts. The indictment does not identify FTX by name as the main victim of the conspiracy, but the details of the hack described in that charging document align with the details publicly known about the theft from FTX, which was collapsing at the time of the attack.

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