A man who is a resident of Dublin has been sentenced to prison for under three years for playing a role in the theft of over $2 million worth of digital currencies. He was a part of a group of attackers who stole cryptocurrencies via SIM hacks.
As reported by news outlet The Irish Times, the United States Department of Homeland Security identified this Irish man named Conor Freeman who had participated in several such kinds of thefts. The main crimes to which he was pleaded guilty include running a computer fraudulently and cryptocurrency thefts. He was also said to have engaged in the possession of crime proceeds. Reportedly, when he got arrested an amount of 147.7 Bitcoin (BTC) was found to be in his possession. This amount is worth approximately $2.7 million at the press time when the price value of BTC is trading above $18k.
Moreover, he has also been found guilty of stealing hundreds of dollars in cryptocurrencies back in the year 2018. On the 15th of May in 2018, he stole $100k worth of digital assets from the victim Darran Marble. While on the other hand, he was also able to steal an amount of $1.9 million and $167.6k worth of digital currencies from Seth Sharpiro and Micheal Templeman respectively, on the 16th and 18th of May in 2018.
Freeman was sentenced to prison on Tuesday for two years and eleven months in the Dublin Circuit Criminal Court. However, Freeman was not running this illicit activity by himself rather it was a group of around six men who were involved in these SIM-swap hacks. This group was involved in hacking digital currency accounts in the year 2018 for a period of three days.
The amount that they drained out of victims was then distributed among the members of the group. Freeman was able to spend a major portion of the total proceeds that he was possessing before he was arrested by the national police force of Ireland called Gardai. However, the police retained the remaining amount of Bitcoin available in an electronic wallet surrendered by the criminal.
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