by James Fanelli at The Wall Street Journal
Federal investigators appear to have cracked the mystery of who hacked into crypto exchange FTX to steal more than $400 million at the time of its collapse in 2022.
The Justice Department charged three people last month with a phone-hacking scheme that included the hack and heist of Sam Bankman-Fried’s onetime company, according to people familiar with the matter.
Robert Powell, Carter Rohn and Emily Hernandez are accused of conspiring to steal dozens of people’s identities over a two-year period to siphon money from accounts they held in crypto exchanges and financial institutions, according to an indictment unsealed Jan. 23. FTX isn’t identified by name in the indictment, but is referred to as “Victim Company-1” in the allegations, the people said.
The three defendants allegedly preyed on victims through SIM card-swap attacks. This type of attack involves tricking a cellphone carrier to switch a victim’s phone number to another device. Having the phone numbers allows a criminal to get past a financial account’s two-factor verification process.
Federal prosecutors say Powell and Hernandez conspired to steal the phone number of an FTX employee on Nov. 11, 2022, the day the exchange filed for bankruptcy protection. Powell then transferred more than $400 million in crypto from FTX to accounts that he and others controlled, the indictment says.
The party behind the stolen FTX crypto had long been unknown and led to speculation whether the hack was an inside job. A month after FTX imploded, Bankman-Fried was charged with stealing billions of dollars in customer funds and lying to investors and lenders. He was convicted of fraud in November after a monthlong trial.
Powell, Rohn and Hernandez are charged with a…
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