Finance

Brooke Brennan and Kevin SmithFBI Phoenix(623) 466-1999 ARIZONA—The FBI Phoenix Field Office wants to educate the public about the dangers of Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) swapping by criminals to steal money from virtual currency accounts. How the scam works—Criminals first identify a victim who is likely to own large amounts of digital currency and obtain their phone number and mobile carrier. They then socially engineer a customer service representative to port the victim’s phone number to a SIM card and phone in their control. Once they obtain control, they will change the passwords to all accounts (email, cloud storage, and social media accounts) by using the password reset option. Criminals can defeat any SMS-based or mobile two-factor authentication on any user accounts ...