REACT Task Force – Page 2 – Network Securitas

July 26, 2021

PlugwalkJoe Does the Perp Walk

This post was originally published on this site Joseph “PlugwalkJoe” O’Connor, in a photo from a paid press release on Sept. 02, 2020, pitching him as a trustworthy cryptocurrency expert and advisor. One day after last summer’s mass-hack of Twitter, KrebsOnSecurity wrote that 22-year-old British citizen Joseph “PlugwalkJoe” O’Connor appeared to have been involved in the incident. When the U.S. Justice Department last week announced O’Connor’s arrest and indictment, his alleged role in the Twitter compromise was well covered in the media. But most of the coverage seems to have overlooked the far more sinister criminal charges in the indictment, […]

December 16, 2021

NY Man Pleads Guilty in $20 Million SIM Swap Theft

This post was originally published on this siteA 24-year-old New York man who bragged about helping to steal more than $20 million worth of cryptocurrency from a technology executive has pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Nicholas Truglia was part of a group alleged to have stolen more than $100 million from cryptocurrency investors using fraudulent “SIM swaps,” scams in which identity thieves hijack a target’s mobile phone number and use that to wrest control over the victim’s online identities. Truglia admitted to a New York federal court that he let a friend use his account at crypto-trading […]

July 21, 2022

Massive Losses Define Epidemic of ‘Pig Butchering’

This post was originally published on this siteU.S. state and federal investigators are being inundated with reports from people who’ve lost hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars in connection with a complex investment scam known as “pig butchering,” wherein people are lured by flirtatious strangers online into investing in cryptocurrency trading platforms that eventually seize any funds when victims try to cash out. The term “pig butchering” refers to a time-tested, heavily scripted, and human-intensive process of using fake profiles on dating apps and social media to lure people into investing in elaborate scams. In a more visceral sense, […]