The U.S. Department of Justice has filed a civil forfeiture complaint against unnamed “perpetrators” in an attempt to recover over $5 million worth of stolen bitcoin following a series of SIM swap attacks across the United States.
“As alleged in the complaint, these funds are traceable to the theft and unauthorized transfer of cryptocurrency from cryptocurrency wallets owned by five victims,” U.S. Attorney Jeanine Ferris Pirro wrote in a statement.
The alleged thefts took place between October 2022 and March 2023. According to the DOJ, the alleged perpetrators “utilized a SIM swapping technique” that granted them “unauthorized access to the victims’ cryptocurrency accounts.”
A SIM swap attack is a type of identity theft where a bad actor tricks a mobile carrier into transferring a victim’s phone number to a SIM card they control. By gaining access to the victim’s device, the attacker can intercept calls, texts, and two-factor authentication codes, potentially granting them access to various crypto accounts.
SIM swapping is a popular attack vector in crypto. In one 2024 instance, the DOJ charged three individuals for allegedly stealing over $400 million from multiple victims, potentially including a former FTX employee, via coordinated SIM-swapping attacks.
According to the DOJ, the attackers moved the stolen funds through multiple cryptocurrency wallets and ultimately consolidated them into one wallet that funded an account on the online casino Stake.com.
Notably, “many of these transactions were circular in that they eventually returned funds to their original source, and consistent with money laundering utilized to ‘clean’ proceeds of criminal activity,” Pirro, alongside Acting Assistant Attorney General Matthew R. Galeotti and FBI Special Agent Brett D. Skiles, said.
“Circular transactions obfuscate the origin of funds by inflating the volume of inflows and outflows in an account, making the larger balance (or source of funds) appear to engage in legitimate business,” they added.
The case, in part, is being prosecuted by the Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section, an organization that works with domestic and international law enforcement agencies to go after cybercrime. The organization reportedly has secured the conviction of over 180 cybercriminals and returned over $350 million in victim funds.
In 2023, the DOJ merged the National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team into the Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section in an effort to boost enforcement actions against bad actors in the crypto space. Earlier this year, the agency shuttered a dedicated National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Unit, calling it part of a “reckless strategy” under the Biden administration.
© 2025 The Block. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.
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