Young Californian to pay $61,000 fine for SIM crypto fraud

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The US Department of Justice, having investigated the fact of cryptocurrency fraud, sentenced a California student from San Diego to payment of compensation and probation.

Department of the Prosecutor's Office of the Eastern DistrictLouisiana reported that Richard Yuan Li, 21, received three years probation and a $61,000 fine for SIM card crypto fraud involving more than $57,000. 

Prosecutors charged Lee with conspiracy.in order to implement a fraudulent scheme, as a result of which 19 people were injured. An investor from New Orleans had his digital assets stolen from the Binance, Bittrex, Coinbase, Gemini and Poloniex exchanges, and one of Lee’s accomplices extorted 100 BTC from the victim.

In their fraudulent scheme, Lee and hisThe co-defendants 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.

Thus Lee and his accomplices receivedpersonal financial information of their potential victims, including bank and cryptocurrency accounts, and other accounts with two-factor authentication. 

According to the Justice Department, Lee participatedin at least 28 SIM card scams between October and December 2018. The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Louisiana said Lee's actions constitute federal crimes because SIM swapping sends signals across state lines and falls under the interstate commerce provisions of the U.S. Constitution.

In the worst case scenario, Lee could have gotten fiveyears in prison, a $250,000 fine and 100 hours of community service, so you could say he's lucky that authorities don't seem to have increased the penalties for such crimes. 

Let us remind you that in 2019 the cryptocurrencyinvestor Michael Terpin wrote an open letter to the chairman of the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) demanding strong action against cell phone number scams.