Cryptocurrency scammer Nicholas Truglia was convicted in 2022 and initially sentenced to 18 months in prison, but on Thursday, his sentence was extended to 12 years for failing to repay debts to his victims from 2018.
According to Bloomberg, Truglia failed to pay over $20 million in restitution to cryptocurrency investor and CEO of PR firm Transform Group, Michael Terpin.
"During sentencing, Mr. Truglia expressed a willingness to repay the full amount stolen from the victims," wrote Judge Alvin Hellerstein in an order dated July 2. The order also stated:
"Despite signing the consent order for restitution, he has not made any payments," the order continued.
As part of the initial ruling, Judge Hellerstein also imposed an additional three years of supervised release beyond the 18-month prison sentence and restitution.
Truglia was sentenced for a telecommunications fraud charge, having used a sophisticated SIM swap scam to hack into Terpin's phone and steal his cryptocurrency.
A SIM swap is the act of transferring a victim's phone number to another SIM card, which can then receive all verification messages from various service providers, including cryptocurrency exchanges and banks, that use the phone number for authentication.
In 2018, Truglia was arrested for using SIM swap tactics to steal cryptocurrency from investors in the San Francisco Bay Area.
That same year, Terpin filed a $224 million lawsuit against his then-wireless carrier AT&T, accusing it of negligence and allowing Truglia to hack into his phone.
Terpin lost $24 million in cryptocurrency due to the SIM swap scheme. The cryptocurrency investor also filed a $75 million civil lawsuit against the scammer and received a full restitution judgment from the court in 2019.
Related: Bitcoin (BTC) storage disclosure data leak exposes information of 27,000 customers
Original article: “Cryptocurrency scammer's sentence increased from 18 months to 12 years for failing to repay debts”
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