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Canadian Police Arrest Teen for Allegedly Stealing $36M in Crypto

It is the biggest cryptocurrency theft ever reported in Canada, police said.

Updated May 11, 2023, 5:49 p.m. Published Nov 17, 2021, 8:13 p.m.

Canadian police in Hamilton, Ontario, arrested a teen for allegedly stealing C$46 million ($36 million) worth of cryptocurrency through a SIM swap attack on a victim located in the U.S.

This is the biggest cryptocurrency theft reported so far in Canada, the Hamilton police said in a press release on Wednesday.
The victim was targeted by a SIM swap attack, in which scammers hijack accounts by manipulating cellular network employees to duplicate phone numbers so “threat actors” can intercept two-factor authorization requests, the police said .
Some of the stolen cryptocurrency was used by the teen to purchase an online username that the online gaming community considers rare. This suspicious transaction then led investigators to uncover the account holder of the username.
The Hamilton police said that they worked on the case in a joint investigation with the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the U.S. Secret Service Electronic Crimes Task Force.
This case is currently before the Canadian courts.

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Canada Theft FBI Investigation

Tanzeel Akhtar

Tanzeel Akhtar has contributed to The Wall Street Journal, BBC, Bloomberg, CNBC, Forbes Africa, Financial Times, The Street, Citywire, Investing.com, Euromoney, Yahoo! Finance, Benzinga, Kitco News, African Business Magazine, Hedge Week, Campden Family Office, Modern Investor, Spear's Wealth Management Magazine, Global Investor, ETF.com, ETF Stream, CIO UK, Funds Global Asia, Portfolio Institutional, Interactive Investor, Bitcoin Magazine, CryptoNews.com, Bitcoin.com, The Local, The Next Web, Mining Journal, Money Marketing, Marketing Week and more. Tanzeel trained as a foreign correspondent at the University of Helsinki, Finland and newspaper journalist at the University of Central Lancashire, UK. She holds a BA (Honours) in English Literature from the Manchester Metropolitan University, UK and completed a semester abroad as an ERASMUS student at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece. She is NCTJ Qualified - Media Law, Public Administration and passed the Shorthand 100WPM with distinction. She does not currently hold value in any digital currencies or projects.