Crypto scammer's sentence bumped to 12 years from 18 months for welshing on debt

Nicholas Truglia, a crypto scammer convicted in 2022 and initially sentenced to 18 months in prison, had his sentence extended to 12 years on Thursday for failure to pay back a victim he targeted in 2018.

Truglia failed to pay over $20 million in restitution to crypto investor and CEO of the public relations company Transform Group, Michael Terpin, according to Bloomberg.

“At sentencing, Mr. Truglia demonstrated a willingness to repay his victim the entire amount stolen,” Judge Alvin Hellerstein wrote in a July 2 order. The order also read:

“At every turn, Mr. Truglia failed to pay restitution and actively evaded law enforcement and judicial efforts to enforce his restitution obligation. Despite evidence at the original sentencing that he owned assets worth $61,830,828.10, well above the imposed restitution obligations.

Despite his signed consent to the restitution order, he made no restitution payments,” the order continued.

Court order for the resentencing of Truglia. Source: PACERAs part of the initial judgment, Judge Hellerstein also imposed three years of supervised release in addition to the 18-month prison sentence and restitution.

Truglia was sentenced for one count of wire fraud after using an elaborate SIM-swapping scam to compromise Terpin’s cellphone and steal his crypto.

Related: Threat actors using 'elaborate social engineering scheme' to target crypto users — Report

The SIM-swapping scam that landed Truglia in hot water

SIM-swapping is the act of transferring a victim’s phone number to another SIM card, which can then receive any and all authentication messages from various service providers, including crypto exchanges and banks, who use the phone number for identity verification.

In 2018, Truglia was arrested for targeting investors in California’s San Francisco Bay Area with SIM-swapping tactics designed to steal cryptocurrencies.

That same year, Terpin filed a $224 million lawsuit against AT&T, his wireless carrier at the time, for negligence and allowing Truglia to compromise his cell phone.

Terpin lost $24 million in crypto to the SIM-swapping scheme. The crypto investor also filed a $75 million civil lawsuit against the scammer and was awarded full damages by the court in 2019.

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