Crypto Scammer Gets Prison Time for Swiping NFTs, Coins via Hacked X Accounts

A younger cybercriminal goes to jail after stealing NFTs and cryptocurrency utilizing hijacked accounts on X—previously Twitter—in an elaborate con. 

Canadian citizen Cameron Albert Redman, 22, was sentenced to 1 yr in jail on Tuesday for conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire fraud, and conspiracy to commit aggravated identification theft.

U.S. authorities mentioned Wednesday that Redman and his co-conspirators in 2022 conned over 200 victims and pocketed $794,000 in days with a rip-off the place they used hacked social media accounts of digital artists to submit hyperlinks to copycat web sites that resembled these of notable creators and types.

After seizing management of high-profile X accounts, Redman and his allies launched pretend raffle promotions, persuading buyers to click on on a hyperlink and authorize a transaction—which gave them entry to their crypto wallets holding NFTs and cash, which they then swiped and bought for illicit income.

Screenshots from court docket filings recommend that hijacked accounts embrace these of creators like Mike “Beeple” Winkelmann and Gary Vaynerchuk, together with the Nouns mission and luxurious model Louis Vuitton.

“Although victims thought they had been authorizing a transaction to obtain NFTs into their digital wallets, they unknowingly enabled the conspirators to take away cryptocurrency and NFTs from their wallets,” feds mentioned in an announcement.

NFTs—or non-fungible tokens—are blockchain tokens linked to digital media like art work, music, or online game property, together with bodily gadgets like merchandise and actual property. The merchandise exploded in worth in the course of the 2021 bull market, however demand for NFTs fell sharply into 2022. Whereas curiosity stays effectively down from that preliminary fervor, there have been latest indicators of life within the NFT market.

Court docket paperwork mentioned that Redman was an clever cybercriminal who had already been to jail for stealing over $40 million in crypto in a SIM-swapping assault.

“The defendant has established himself as a classy, profitable, and repeat cybercriminal,” court docket paperwork learn. 

“Although one yr is a big sentence for a juvenile, it appeared to don’t have any deterrent impact,” they added. “Inside not less than one yr of being launched, the defendant was camped out in his father’s basement in search of—and discovering—new methods to revenue from crime.”