Call of Duty Players Linked to $3 million Cryptocurrency Theft
A gang of Call of Duty players is suspected of masterminding a plan to steal more than $3 million in cryptocurrency. Citing unsealed court documents, the Chicago Sun-Times reports that the group — which includes a Dolton, IL man and a man from Bloomington, IL — is alleged to have hacked into cryptocurrency wallets after gaining access to the victims’ phones. According to an application for a warrant to search the Dolton man’s home, the Bloomington man informed the FBI that he met members of the group online while playing warfare simulation video game Call of Duty. He claimed that they forced him to partake by “SWATing” him– a slang that means raising a false alarm about a crime purportedly happening at a given address to trigger a response from law enforcement. He added that members of the group gave him details of victims to enable him to take over more than a hundred phones with the ultimate aim of stealing funds from the victims’ crypto wallets.The practice, known as “SIM hijacking” is becoming increasingly widespread as it is relatively low-tech with potentially high rewards if the stolen phone numbers are linked to crypto wallets. CCN recently reported that Bitcoin investor Michael Terpin sued AT&T for $224 million after losing $24 million worth of cryptocurrency to so-called SIM hijackers who managed to transfer his telephone number and subsequently reset the password to his crypto wallet.
