Today in Crypto: High School Hacker to Pay $22M in AT&T Case

Twenty-year-old crypto hacker Ellis Pinsky will have to pay $22 million to the victim of his scheme, crypto investor Michael Terpin, Coindesk wrote.

Pinsky had been dubbed “Baby Al Capone” by the New York Post, because he was 15 years old, a 10th grader in suburban New York at the time of the hack. Pinsky confirmed his involvement in the hack later in a court filing signed by both himself and Terpin.

After that, the remaining claims against Pinsky will be dismissed, other than the New York state law claim for conversion.

The hack happened in 2018, involving a SIM swap scheme targeting AT&T, and resulted in Terpin losing $24 million in cryptocurrency.

SIM swapping refers to a kind of hack where two-factor authentication is bypassed through mobile operators, to break into sensitive websites like crypto exchanges and online banking.

In addition, Terpin’s attorney, Tim Toohey, said he hopes AT&T will take responsibility for the security failures leading to the breach. In 2020, a judge dismissed a punitive damages claim against AT&T from Terpin, and the court said the claim can be put back after discovery.

The case is set to go ahead in May 2023.

PYMNTS wrote about the case in 2019 when Terpin was awarded $75.8 million in a court document over the scheme, that time being from a civil judgment against another suspect, Nicholas Truglia.

Read more: US Crypto Investor Awarded $75M In Fraud Suit

Truglia, according to the reports, was part of the scheme to steal his crypto after gaining access to his mobile phone. Court documents had Truglia pay Terpin the money as compensatory and punitive damages, in what reports said was one of the biggest payouts involving cryptocurrency and an individual.

The case also showed the number of scams and schemes going on in crypto which became even more of a spotlight after the pandemic forced much of daily life and finance in general to go digital, causing a boost in hacks overall.