CEO Jonathan Manzi SIM Swaps His Competitor

Check out this story where the CEO named Jonathan Manzi SIM swapped his competitor!

This is eCrimeBytes.com S 2 Ep 2-2: CEO Jonathan Manzi SIM Swaps His Competitor – Act 2: Manzi Strikes Back! Go back to act 1 if you want the background:

CEO Jonathan Manzi SIM Swaps His Competitor – Act 1: Meet The Players

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00:00:09:28 – 00:00:29:14
Keith
Hey, welcome back to eCrimeBytes. This is the CEO whose SIM swaps his competitor and we’re talking about Jonathan Manzi. And if you haven’t seen Act One, listen, you just got a back up and you got to listen to it because it gives you all the background that you’re going to need for this one.

00:00:29:16 – 00:00:58:21
Keith
But in case you’re jumping in and you’re just stubborn, I’m going to give you a real quick, real quick recap here. We have two individuals we’re talking about. There’s Troy Pepper, who was a salesperson in the kiosk printing industry. And you can think universities this is where these kiosks usually exist. And you have the CEO, Jonathan Manzi, of a company named Ink. And Troy Pepper has bounced from Wepa, a competitor of Ink.

00:00:58:23 – 00:01:08:18
Keith
That’s where he started. He went and worked for Jonathan Manzi Ink for a while and then he went back to Wepa and this is over about a period, a two year period.

00:01:08:18 – 00:01:22:05
Keith
And when he made that last jump, Jonathan Manzi believes he took information from Ink about this new mini kiosk that they’re producing in order to win more contracts.

00:01:22:07 – 00:01:44:16
Keith
So we were saying, what would you do at that point? Well, instead of starting a civil suit or going to law enforcement, Jonathan Manzi decides to strike back and we’re going to tell you exactly what he did. Now, I’m going to use the term hacks back and I for audio listeners, I’m I’m using a lot of air quotes.

00:01:44:16 – 00:02:12:21
Keith
I use a lot of air quotes. And when I generally talk, if you’ve never seen me on video. So it’s like half of our act really is just me waving my hands using air quotes. But in this term I’m saying Jonathan Manzi quote unquote hacks back and why do I use air quotes? And it’s because I don’t personally believe in this term, but I’m going to use it because it’s the most succinct term in order to capture what it is we’re talking about.

00:02:12:23 – 00:02:41:03
Keith
But it’s also the term that Jonathan Manzi used in his writing. So I got to tell you, he says he hacks back. The government claims he just hacked, not back. So what happened here? Jonathan Manzi gets himself a Samsung phone. So now not only does he have his normal Jonathan Manzi phone, but he’s got this brand new phone for a purpose.

00:02:41:05 – 00:03:10:06
Keith
That purpose is to call AT&T while he’s on the phone with AT&T. He says, Hey, AT&T, I got this phone and I got this SIM card that goes into this nice Samsung phone. And my name is Troy Pepper. And they say, Oh, Mr. Pepper, we need you to verify yourself. Can you give me your Social Security number? Things along those lines.

00:03:10:06 – 00:03:36:14
Keith
It may not be exactly that question, but you get the line. They’re going to you get the line of questioning that AT&T should be and probably did ask Jonathan Manzi and you go, oh my God, how did he have all that information? My theory and the court paperwork didn’t say this, but my theory is Troy Pepper worked for Jonathan Manzi, so he has all that information in his h.r.

00:03:36:14 – 00:04:05:08
Keith
file. It’s not hard to pull that information. So literally anything at&t could ask him, probably his social security number. His address is, you know, all the same stuff you use to set up your financial accounts and all that stuff. All in the files I imagine. So at the end of the day, what happens? He says, I got this phone, I need it switched to Troy Peppers phone number.

00:04:05:11 – 00:04:31:06
Keith
And what physically and virtually happens is the phone number that was on Troy Pepper’s phone now appears and Jonathan Manzi spare phone and the technical term for this is a SIM swap. So the phone number, the sim was swapped on that phone number. Kind of crazy, right? We talked to you about season one episode one, definitely episode one.

00:04:31:06 – 00:05:04:20
Keith
But up through, I think about episode four ish, we talked about SIM swapping a lot and we talked about criminals overseas and, you know, kids in basements. And so, so forth. This case we’re talking about a corporate CEO, a very I would say a highly intelligent corporate CEO, SIM swapping somebody else that ends up being his competitor. And this right here, this was the reason why I picked this case is because this was the interesting twist in it, in my opinion.

00:05:04:20 – 00:05:05:28
Keith
Okay. So

00:05:05:28 – 00:05:31:09
Keith
Manzi then uses his new phone that’s attached to Troy Peppers phone number and goes to Troy’s pepper gmail, his Google mail. It depends on how you think about it. Some people think about it two different ways, but he goes to his Google Mail and says, I need to reset my password. Remember, this is usually the second step of a SIM swap we talked about in season one.

00:05:31:12 – 00:05:56:02
Keith
So now he owns Pepper’s Google email by just mere association of that account. Just knowing his Google email account, he has access to Pepper’s file storage, his g-drive, his Google drive, which is all these files that Pepper stored up there. It’s the same account. So once you own one account, you own all of it.

00:05:56:02 – 00:05:57:13
Keith
Kind of a good bad thing, right?

00:05:57:13 – 00:06:07:00
Keith
I mean, it’s easy when you log in and have access to all your apps on Google, but if somebody gets access to your Google account, they have access to everything like they do. In this case,

00:06:07:00 – 00:06:28:27
Keith
one more step. So he didn’t just stop there. Manzi Then changed a credential for Pepper’s Wepa Dropbox account. So his corporate Dropbox account, he changed the credentials there too, so he could access Pepper’s, what Pepper could see as an employee of Wepa.

00:06:28:27 – 00:06:32:14
Keith
He could he could now also see, Manzi could also now see.

00:06:32:14 – 00:06:57:14
Keith
Okay. And then you go, Holy shit, That was crazy story. Nope, nope. There’s more. There is more. At this point. The government alleges Manzi contacted Wepa customers anonymously, and I don’t have the language of what he sent them. I looked really hard for it, but I couldn’t find it.

00:06:57:14 – 00:07:27:04
Keith
I imagine it’s probably not. It probably not. Hey, how’s it going, buddy? It’s probably. Hey, Troy. Pepper stole a bunch of shit. This all this shit’s not his stuff along those lines. And because of that, the company or the contracts that Wepa was working on, they fell apart because they had not fully been completed. In Wepa’s claims they said that they lost money totaling about $600,000.

00:07:27:04 – 00:07:35:04
Keith
So a serious chunk of change for a very malicious sounding act by Manzi.

00:07:35:04 – 00:07:36:22
Keith
And I did

00:07:36:22 – 00:07:51:05
Keith
a lot of research on this. And basically this is what they considered was this is the immediate damages to what Manzi did, this the loss of contracts. This is kind of what they used as the loss throughout this case.

00:07:51:05 – 00:07:58:25
Seth
Okay. So at this point, opinions differ as to, you know, what Manzi claims he found

00:07:58:25 – 00:08:38:04
Seth
regarding Ink Labs data in Pepper’s accounts, but what the government kind of did or didn’t ignore. Right? So the government claims that Manzi accessed Wepa data for competitive purposes. Obviously. Now Manzi claims it was for self-defense or as he said, hacking back purposes. But we had the very key point here and Jones brought it up what was then goal right if he was his hacking back like ultimately, you know, and the fact that he was anonymously contacting customers of Wepa clearly indicated that he had a motive, which was basically to arguably, you know, in the best case scenario, make sure

00:08:38:04 – 00:09:02:01
Seth
they’re not unjustly enriched. But in the worst case scenario, basically revenge. And so the government obviously took the latter position on it and in doing so, claimed that it violated a specific set of of a U.S. code related to fraud and computers. So in late August of 2019, the indictment came down

00:09:02:01 – 00:09:11:08
Seth
and that tied to action taken two years prior, in July of 2017 on four felony counts, all related to fraud, related to computers.

00:09:11:08 – 00:09:12:24
Seth
So the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

00:09:12:24 – 00:09:13:05
Keith
Yep.

00:09:13:05 – 00:09:44:23
Keith
All right. So at this point, the case goes cold. For a while I was flipping through the docket and it’s just kind of a lot of motion practice. And if you say what is motion practice, it’s kind of like the defense saying, hey, I want to suppress this evidence that the government wants to use. And what happens is there are some reports that are generated by maybe some experts, and then you have to go back and forth in court and realize whether or not their claim may be true or false.

00:09:44:23 – 00:09:47:22
Keith
And then, you know, either sustain

00:09:47:22 – 00:10:18:29
Keith
the you know, whatever their objection, it is that they have, you know, for instance, this particular evidence that the government wants to present and one of them, one of the interesting tidbits in this lull in the case was they tried to move to declare the government’s witness, Troy Pepper, as not credible. And I thought about that and I was like, okay, if I was on the jury, would I find him credible or not credible?

00:10:19:02 – 00:10:38:20
Keith
I’m still kind of reserving judgment because I haven’t seen enough information about what Troy Pepper may have done. But even if Troy Pepper took something, I would still look at him as a victim. So I wouldn’t look at him as an expert witness. But I would look at him probably as a witness of, you know, this is what happened to me.

00:10:38:20 – 00:11:31:25
Keith
So eventually, chug, chug, chug through the legal process. Two years go by. It is now. This is now 2022. They set a trial date of December 5th of 2022. So you think they’re going to trial? But …. a couple of days after trial was set to start, Manzi pleads guilty. So he pled guilty to two counts. He pled guilty to count one, which is one count on the first day of July of 2017 in Nebraska, he intentionally accessed and attempted to access a computer without authorization, thereby obtained information from a protected computer of Google email account of TP, which is Troy Pepper.

00:11:31:27 – 00:11:36:16
Keith
And when I look at count two, pretty much looks the same as the same date.

00:11:36:16 – 00:11:57:13
Keith
It’s the Dropbox. So the count two is the Dropbox of Wepa. So he pled to the email access of Troy Pepper and then he pled to the Dropbox access of Wepa. And I will note they are misdemeanor charges. I am noting this because Manzi noted all over his stuff and I want to make sure, you know, I’m being fair here.

00:11:57:13 – 00:12:19:10
Keith
When he pled guilty, he agrees to a minimum of six months. So his best case scenario is going to prison for six months. And you wonder, you got to be like you just looked at somebody’s email, right? Six months. That’s probably tough enough. Surprise, surprise. It’s not six months. Hold on a little bit here. You’re going to see what it is.

00:12:19:10 – 00:12:31:24
Keith
It’s longer than six months. Also, this is a misdemeanor plea and I’m not going to predict. I don’t know. Have you looked too far ahead? Do you have any predictions at this point?

00:12:31:26 – 00:12:53:19
Seth
I think that it’s going to be a little longer. I think the courts are going to look at this and realize that this was a revenge motivated scenario and that there is a process and due process to be taken, even if if you’ve been wronged, you can’t be a vigilante electronically or Charles Bronson style. So I think they’re going to go with being a little bit harsher on him.

00:12:53:21 – 00:13:12:06
Keith
If I’d stop at this point in the case, knowing nothing else about this case, just giving what we’ve given you, I would guess, 6 to 12 months at this, that would be my guess, just knowing that that much. And I will tell you, stick around, because we will give you the exact figure in the not too distant future.

00:13:12:08 – 00:13:33:04
Keith
But I have to pause because we’re done with Act two. You’re going to have to come back for Act three, which is the plea. And why did I break it here? Because at the plea, the hearing and the plea agreement, the whole thing, I’m just saying the plea, we’re going to find out some shit. This is where we really start finding out some stuff.

00:13:33:04 – 00:13:55:19
Keith
And we not only find out stuff in this case, but we find out about stuff going on during the court process. So you’re going to go, Oh man, don’t do that. But but Manzi did. So stick around and we hope to see you on Act three. The plea with the CEO that SIM swaps this competitor eCrimeBytes.com.

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CEO Jonathan Manzi SIM Swaps His Competitor – Act 2: Manzi Strikes Back

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