Sim Swapper Doxes And SWATs His Accomplice
Hacking. Disinformation. Surveillance. CYBER is Motherboard’s podcast and reporting on the dark underbelly of the internet.
There’s no honor among thieves, including those who steal cryptocurrency.
On Tuesday, the Department of Justice announced that a SIM swapper who stole almost $17,000 with an accomplice pleaded guilty to aggravated identity theft in a case of criminal partnership gone wrong.
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The SIM swapper, 20-year-old Kyell Bryan ended up doxing and swatting his former partner, according to the hacker’s guilty plea. Doxing refers to the common and unsavory online practice of revealing a person’s real identity and other personal information such as home address in order to harass them. Swatting refers to another dangerous and sometimes fatal internet harassment tactic in which someone pretends there’s an emergency at their target’s home, prompting police to send a SWAT team.
In June of 2019, Bryan and Jordan Milleson worked together to steal the password of an employee working for an unidentified cellphone carrier using one of several phishing websites Bryan set up. They then used the password to login into the company’s internal network, which allowed them to steal the phone number of victims in what is a typical SIM swapping attack. At that point, they used their control of the phone number to break into the victim’s cryptocurrency account and steal cryptocurrency valued around $16,847.47, according to the Department of Justice.
Do you have more information about SIM swapping attacks? We’d love to hear from you. You can contact Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai securely on Signal at +1 917 257 1382, Wire/Wickr @lorenzofb, or email lorenzofb@vice.com.
Hours later, Bryan and other accomplices started suspecting that Milleson had “snaked” them. In other words, they believed Milleson had not given them their fair share of the heist.
“Stop trying to play me n*****,” Bryan told Milleson, according to the plea document.
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Another accomplice told Milleson: “Imma burn down ur house and shred it to its core when I get info on u imma ruin ur life just like what I did to [another individual,]” the plea document reads.
Bryan and the others then began to try to identify Milleson, whom at the time only knew by an alias. Soon, they figured out Milleson used the nickname “Chikri,” and they asked a chat room for help doxing him. Bryan then learned Chikri also went by Jordy and started asking around for more information about him.
“He took money out [and] I helped him clean it […] then he made this lie the whole night and basically when I cought [sic] him in the lie he admitted he snaked and removed us from the group,” Bryan told another person.
At the time of the message, someone called the Baltimore County Police Department claiming he shot his father and was going to shoot himself. The person then gave the police Milleson’s address, and threatened to shoot the cops if they showed up. When they did show up, there was no emergency at all.
Milleson was sentenced to two years in prison on May 5, 2021. Bryan faces two years in prison for aggravated identity theft.
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