By: Yuritza Arroyo
Federal authorities announced that a Hudson County man was 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.
According to officials, Ebrahem Adeeb, 20, of Bayonne, previously pleaded guilty by videoconference to an information charging him with conspiring to commit wire fraud.
Officials say 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.
According to court documents, 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 ordered to pay restitution of $504,418.