A 22-year-old Round Rock man has been sentenced to a two-year prison stretch for pulling off a major cryptocurrency heist through a technique known as SIM swapping. Daniel Akira Mills was handed down the sentence for swindling over $600,000 from unsuspecting victims by hijacking their phone numbers and raiding their online accounts.
Court records detail that from August 2019 to February 2021, Mills and other culprits illicitly commandeered the SIM cards tied to victims’ mobile numbers. They then proceeded to quickly go on to reset passwords and bypass the security protocols of various personal and financial accounts. This SIM swap fraud not only siphoned off large sums of cryptocurrencies but also granted perpetrators unauthorized access to social media profiles and personal data.
This high-tech thievery has brought Mills not only jail time but also the obligation to pay back over half a million dollars to those he defrauded. To right the wrongs committed, the court has ordered Mills to pay more than $530,000 in restitution to the victims of his cyber intrusions.
“We now run much of our lives through smartphones. From social media to managing our finances, they have become essential tools. This can be very helpful, but also comes with many risks,” said U.S. Attorney Jaime Esparza for the Western District of Texas, in a statement obtained by the U.S. Attorney’s Office. Ensuring to not stop until making an example out of such individuals, Esparza added, “By ‘SIM swapping,’ or stealing the phone numbers of victims to assume their identities, Mills and his cohorts defrauded innocent members of society and caused great harm. My office will not hesitate to hold fraudsters like Mills accountable for their irresponsible destructive actions.”
The U.S. Secret Service and the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office’s REACT Task Force were the agencies behind the scenes that conducted the investigation leading to Mills’ prosecution. Assistant U.S. Attorney G. Karthik Srinivasan was in charge of the legal proceedings against Mills, whose cybercriminal acts have now landed him behind bars and facing substantial financial restitution.