Criminals take over family's Cricket account and drain their bank and investment apps

Criminals take over family’s Cricket account and drain their bank and investment apps،

We have tried to warn you about the reality of the SIM swapping threat. By getting a SIM card connected to your mobile account, a thief can use a burner phone, insert the SIM card and take over your apps, including financial apps. As a result, these criminals will empty your bank accounts and max out your credit cards. It's scary, that's for sure. Thursday, Chicago WLS TV channel released a report on an entire family whose Cricket Wireless account consisting of five phones was hacked and money was stolen from the family's financial apps.

Family's Cricket Wireless account underwent SIM swap

Cricket says the family, who wished to remain anonymous, were another victim of a SIM swap and even now, four months after their wireless service was hijacked, the family is still feeling the effects of the crime. Cricket is a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) owned by AT&T and although it does not have its own wireless network, Cricket customers use AT&T's network for voice and data.

How a SIM swap works - Criminals take over family's Cricket account and dump their banking and investment apps

How a SIM card swap works

Cricket says it has measures in place designed to prevent SIM swaps “and we work closely with law enforcement, our industry and consumers to help prevent this type of crime. We take these matters seriously.” serious”. The victims of this SIM Swap are a man named Mike, his wife and family who live in the suburbs of Chicago.

Every day one of their five phones would be disconnected from the family cricket network and go into what Mike called “SOS mode”. This is the SOS icon that appears in the upper right corner of an iPhone that is not connected to wireless service. Mike said the phones couldn't make or receive calls or send or receive text messages.

Mike and his wife are blocked from their Amazon accounts and social media. Speaking about his wife's phone, Mike said: “They physically got into her phone. We know this because apps were added to her phone that she hadn't added, contact numbers were replaced with those of friends and family. added in his phone. We had to easily change passwords for 100 accounts.

The couple are also locked out of their Robin Hood investment account and their Coinbase crypto account where they had a total of $1,200. Another $2,000 in Apple Cash and gift cards stored on their phones were stolen. The thieves also attempted to withdraw money from their bank accounts. Mike said: “Luckily we stopped him in time and they were able to arrest him.”

The thieves carried out the SIM swap by obtaining the family's Cricket Wireless PIN number.

“Ultimately, because they had access to our phones, we had notes on our phone with our garage code information so they could open and close our garage if they wanted,” added Mike. He says Cricket Wireless let him down. “We tried calling Cricket Wireless customer service. Every time we call, no one can help us, no one can do anything about it.”

The thieves were able to obtain a SIM card for Mike and his family because they had somehow obtained the family's Cricket Wireless PIN number, which allowed them to apply for a new SIM card. Again, Mike comments on this by stating, “That PIN is what they said, that's what the person used to access the phone, so therefore they said it was my fault that , somehow the PIN was used to gain access to the phone. “This account. There's no way anyone could have gotten a PIN from me. It wasn't written anywhere, no one knew except me.”

Here's a suggestion. Change the PIN you use for your wireless account often. Don't use a date of birth or something a thief could discover. Cricket says it's “building tools to make it harder for someone to pretend to be you,” is “training employees to recognize fraud attempts” and is “developing improved authentication methods.”