Join me to hear the story of Jordan Dave Persad, a serial SIM swapper who stole nearly $1,000,000 of cryptocurrency from his victims. This is eCrimeBytes.com Season 2 Episode 18 SIM Swapping And Bitcoin Theft With Jordan Dave Persad – Act 1: Tragedy And Opportunity.
PS – I called Jordan by his best friend’s name “Jarrod/Jared” a handful of times because they sounded so alike. Sorry about that.
For the background, please see:
Sources:
- https://www.justice.gov/usao-az/pr/hacker-sentenced-30-months-sim-swapping-conspiracy-resulting-theft-nearly-1-million
- https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/67311139/united-states-v-persad/
Transcript:
00:00:10:01 – 00:00:41:27
Keith
Hey ya crazy bastards. Welcome to this week’s episode of eCrimeBytes. And this is where I read the court documentation, then roast the criminal so you don’t have to. This is season two episode 18 and this is SIM swapping and Bitcoin theft with Jordan Dave Persad. All right, now this is act number two, make fat stacks, which is where I tell you how he made his money and then eventually was caught by law enforcement. If you’re jumping in,
00:00:41:28 – 00:00:59:48
Keith
there’s a lot of background that I really, really recommend you go back and watch Act One. Now, if you’re on YouTube, I’ll put a link up here so you can go back and hit the playlist and go back to Act One in view to your heart’s content. If you decide you don’t want to do that, let me give you a real, real quick tour of what happened in Act One.
00:00:59:48 – 00:01:29:47
Keith
So I brought you the criminal in this case. His name is Jordan Dave Persad. He had a background from poverty, so he grew up in tough times and his mother met this guy that was really into this online gaming. And Jordan looked at him. He was his stepfather, and the stepfather hung himself. So Jordan kind of spiraled into the online world.
00:01:29:51 – 00:01:56:25
Keith
And he also had a best friend in the online world. He died of fentanyl overdose and the best friend’s brother died of fentanyl overdose same night spiraled further. Jordan also lost his girlfriend that he met online, spiraled further. Now, Jordan is within a group of people that have now purchased big lists of usernames and passwords of email addresses of victims out there on the Internet.
00:01:56:30 – 00:02:28:05
Keith
And they’ve written computer programs to go through these lists to pick out victims that have a higher than normal cryptocurrency holdings, because now, now in this act, they’re going to exploit this. So now I think you’re caught up. So let’s go ahead and get right into this episode, which leads to some background. And I apologize. In order for you understand this, I got to talk about SIM swapping. And I realize part of our audience probably haven’t heard the episodes
00:02:28:05 – 00:02:28:33
Keith
I’ve done in
00:02:28:33 – 00:02:50:05
Keith
season number one, where we start talking about SIM swapping. So let me give you a real quick tour of SIM swapping if you’ve never heard it. So imagine you have your phone, right? Everybody has a phone Nowadays. This thing has either a physical card in it, or nowadays it also it can be an electronic, like a virtual card that you never see.
00:02:50:05 – 00:02:53:51
Keith
It’s just a kind of like a software number in your phone.
00:02:53:51 – 00:03:15:56
Keith
This card is called a SIM card esim and that ties your phone number to your physical phone. So what if you imagine if you’re like T-Mobile or your Verizon or something like that, your phone company knows your phone through that SIM card. It takes that phone number, assigns it to that SIM card.
00:03:15:56 – 00:03:46:43
Keith
That SIM card gets plugged into your physical phone. Your phone lights up with that phone number. Okay. Hope you’re with me so far. So the attacker, the attacker buys just like a throwaway phone and a new SIM card. Both of these things you can get online. They’re not expensive. The attacker then calls up and socially engineers or or even easier, sometimes simply just pays off
00:03:46:48 – 00:04:14:38
Keith
an employee at the phone company of where your phone is registered through. So say like Verizon or T-Mobile, the attacker will call them, either pretend they’re you and trick them into assigning your phone number to their SIM card or they will just pay off an internal employee there and they’ll just flip it in the computer. And the same thing will happen where your phone number now will be associated with that attacker’s SIM card and that attacker’s phone that they bought.
00:04:14:38 – 00:04:45:37
Keith
Now this is where things get really sideways since the attacker is you on your phone, you know, your phone number from the phone company, What they will typically do is go to accounts like Instagram or your email account or other social media accounts and say, I forgot my password. And these services, some of them will text you a link to reset it.
00:04:45:41 – 00:05:06:53
Keith
So that’s one way you can take a phone like that that’s been sim swapped and take a hold of somebody else’s account is if you can get that text to come to that new phone, you can then reset the username and password and you then own that account. And a lot of times they only need to do that with one big account, like say your email.
00:05:06:58 – 00:05:27:35
Keith
If they can do that with your phone and get access to your email pretty much every other account then trusts your email and you can go with all those other accounts and say, I want to reset my password, I want to reset my password, I want to reset my password. They all go to that compromised email account. The attacker then resets all your passwords and then owns all those accounts too.
00:05:27:40 – 00:05:41:10
Keith
So you can imagine this SIM swapping is a big, big deal when it comes to compromising people’s accounts and computer security. Now, this is what happened. That’s what
00:05:41:10 – 00:05:53:26
Keith
his crew did. Their SIM swapped people’s phones using that whole process that I talked about. And they did it both ways. They they either hired insiders at phone companies or they social engineer the phone company.
00:05:53:26 – 00:06:04:44
Keith
So they did it both ways that I explain this allowed them to take control of their victim’s phone numbers, which then gave them access to their cryptocurrency accounts and they could reset passwords.
00:06:04:44 – 00:06:31:27
Keith
so one of the things I forgot to mention in the SIM swapping background is once the attacker has your phone number, a lot of times they can generate those multifactor codes that are used to protect accounts as well. So if you’re familiar with usernames and passwords of accessing your account, but then a service saying what is your seven digit code on your application or Hey, I just texted you a seven digit code, can you put it in here?
00:06:31:27 – 00:07:12:21
Keith
Now that’s multi factor authentication. When they own your phone and it’s text, they have your multi-factor authentication codes as well. So that’s not to say that multi-factor authentication is bad and it doesn’t protect your accounts. It’s just saying once attackers have your phone, they can exploit this security protection that you’ve put on your account as well. If they use the text messaging multi-factor, which most services do, and that’s probably the most insecure version of the multifactor out there.
00:07:12:21 – 00:07:33:34
Keith
Okay. So once they were in the cryptocurrency accounts of their victim, I’m talking Jared and his coconspirators now, they would transfer the funds out into accounts they owned, and a lot of times they would launder them through mixing services and other exchanges. And if that doesn’t make sense to you, I’m not going to go in depth on this.
00:07:33:34 – 00:08:03:43
Keith
But basically with cryptocurrency, there’s a ledger out there kept of how this information or how this currency has traded hands through accounts and there are services out there where you can send your cryptocurrency through that kind of obfuscates that ledger for you. And we talk in depth on this in season two, episode seven, which is the criminal’s brother swipes $5 million Bitcoin back from Darknet seizure because their whole Darknet service
00:08:03:43 – 00:08:16:10
Keith
it was helix one of these mixers that criminals like Jordan would use to send his cryptocurrency through in order to obfuscate where it came from.
00:08:16:14 – 00:08:25:19
Keith
Once the loot made it in their accounts, they would then divide it out amongst the crew and it all be on their way and they go spend it right.
00:08:25:19 – 00:08:42:09
Keith
So let’s talk about one victim real quick here. This is April 4th of 2022. There was one victim that lived in the state of Arizona. Persad and his crew stole $28,000 of crypto from this victim using this whole scheme, this generic scheme that I brought to you,
00:08:42:09 – 00:08:50:16
Keith
this was the victim that the government will later use to charge Jordan Persad of his crimes.
00:08:50:16 – 00:09:18:40
Keith
So that’s why I’m sort of setting the stage for you here. It’s not clear how the government initially found Jordan, but if I had to guess, just based upon, you know, my background and just reading between the lines here, I think it might have been some blockchain analysis that probably led to the end account where they could identify an individual a lot like we’ve brought to you in other episodes in our prior seasons.
00:09:18:45 – 00:09:38:01
Keith
A lot of times they’ll find the end account and then law enforcement will go to that account service. So be it, like Coinbase. And they will serve paperwork that says who owns this account? And a lot of times people will have their driver’s license or whatever identifying information right in there, and that’s how law enforcement will find them.
00:09:38:06 – 00:09:46:40
Keith
I don’t know that is the case here, but that was the case in other episodes that I brought you previously, and that could be the case here as well.
00:09:46:40 – 00:10:04:13
Keith
So all said and done. How much did Jordan make off as victims? They stole, meaning him and his coconspirators stole almost $1,000,000 worth of cryptocurrency. It was $950,000 worth of cryptocurrency, so almost $1,000,000.
00:10:04:18 – 00:10:30:21
Keith
His haul Jordan Persad’s haul was $475,000. So nearly half of what they made Jordan took home so I would imagine he’s got to be he’s got to be the head honcho of that group if he’s making half of what that group makes, because all those tasks that I talked about earlier, where you had all those people filling all those different roles, you had to have at least.
00:10:30:35 – 00:10:42:54
Keith
Well, we knew he had at least three coconspirators. So he’s making half. And his other couple of coconspirators aren’t making half individually. So you can imagine he has to be the head honcho, right.
00:10:42:54 – 00:10:53:57
Keith
So what did he spend his money on? And I just found a tiny little blip on this in the court paperwork where it just said designer clothes, luxury watches, etc..
00:10:54:02 – 00:11:12:09
Keith
So nothing real exciting, unfortunately. I mean, that wasn’t exciting to me at all. If I had a bunch of money in the last thing I’d be buying is designer watches and nice clothes. I’d be buying fun things like boats and cars and airplanes and taking trips and things. But that was what he chose
00:11:12:09 – 00:11:14:35
Keith
to spend his loot on.
00:11:14:40 – 00:11:42:57
Keith
So if we fast forward to June 5th of 2023, so this is just a couple of months ago from when I recorded this, there was a guilty plea and arrest all at once. It was like he entered the court system saying, I’m guilty, punish me. So he was charged with conspiracy because, as I said, he had this group and they have, you know, the whole group together would pull off this crime.
00:11:42:57 – 00:11:50:50
Keith
So I think maybe that was the best law to charge him with was conspiracy. Maybe that was the stiffest charge that they could hit him with.
00:11:50:50 – 00:12:07:02
Keith
Sometimes I’ve seen this where they have the plea almost in hand when everything goes down in court where it’s like, hey, we’re indicting him, or the charges come out and we have the plea and it all gets tied up all in one day. Maybe that’s what happened here.
00:12:07:31 – 00:12:31:30
Keith
Okay. Now, this is a point where I thought it was really interesting to kind of give you an understanding of what type of person Jordan might be. This is something that Jordan’s lawyer wrote in one of the documents when he was trying to describe Jordan. And I’ll read it for you and then I’ll give you my thoughts. They say emoting, meaning emotion is not in the defendant’s repertoire.
00:12:31:35 – 00:12:53:53
Keith
This is what the United States probation saw. It’s not a lack of remorse. To the contrary, after the defendant pled guilty and met with the United States probation, the defendant and undersigned counsel met outside the federal courthouse while awaiting our respective Ubers. The defendant was going to his hotel and the counsel writing this was going to the airport.
00:12:53:53 – 00:12:55:20
Keith
All of a sudden, the defendant,
00:12:55:20 – 00:13:13:12
Keith
shocked the lawyer by suddenly hugging the lawyer and thanking him for caring for him like he was family. So you can imagine. Lawyer This is just their job, right? And they’re getting ready to go to the airport and Jordan just turned around and just hugged him and said, thank you so much for fighting for me.
00:13:13:12 – 00:13:38:42
Keith
You you’ve been there. It’s like you’ve been if you fought for me and cared for me like I’m family. Then Jordan started to cry and explained that he ruined meaning Jordan ruined his family’s life by being selfish and his criminal actions. And the attorney says, Hey, Jordan was awkward is embrace of me, but his emotion was real. So this is kind of why I give you the background.
00:13:38:42 – 00:13:50:55
Keith
It’s a lot of times it’s not these, it’s not these real super malicious defendants out there that don’t care about anybody else. We we brought to you those defendants, but sometimes there are defendants that are just
00:13:50:55 – 00:13:59:19
Keith
they have difficulty with the real world and they’re online and it’s like this. And you just it’s like Jimmy Zhong. And now
00:13:59:19 – 00:14:05:12
Keith
Persad. where they’re just socially awkward, but they’re very good at what they did criminally online.
00:14:05:12 – 00:14:32:04
Keith
There’s a sentencing hearing in October 10th of 2023. So this is this is about a month ago from recording here. The government comes in and they say, hey, we want 30 months of prison and three years of supervised release. And they say, hey, this is the low end of the sentence. Okay? We also want restitution to the victims in the tune of about $950,000, What Jordan made in his crimes here.
00:14:32:04 – 00:14:35:18
Keith
The defense steps up at the hearing and says, hey,
00:14:35:18 – 00:15:03:25
Keith
there’s no doubt he committed a severe crime here, but he has no prior record. He’s never seen a jail cell before. He’s just over five feet tall and not even 140 pounds. He’s about to go into federal prison system where inmates of his stature could end up prey, especially inmates of his stature who are young and immature, a sentence below the guideline range.
00:15:03:31 – 00:15:30:29
Keith
Most certainly scare the ever living daylights out of this defendant and impress upon him the gravity of his offense. Federal prison will not help the defendant mature. Federal prison will not provide effective correctional treatment. Federal prison is not a panacea. A very short term of prison followed by intensive community supervision will be much more effective in this case.
00:15:30:34 – 00:15:41:39
Keith
The defendant should not be given up on a this age and stage in his life. And you remember, he’s pretty young here. So I read you exactly
00:15:41:39 – 00:15:54:00
Keith
the documentation. And this whole time, if you weren’t thinking this, this is what I was thinking. Federal pound me in the ass prison from Office Space. Yeah. This guy, five foot tall, 140 lbs.
00:15:54:00 – 00:16:21:46
Keith
This is I, I was maybe 140 lbs in high school. So that was he’s, it’s going to be tough for him in prison. So a few days later, on October 25th of 2023, the judge comes back with sentencing and he says 30 months. So it was exactly what the government wanted. And they also said supervised release three years again, exactly what the government wanted.
00:16:21:51 – 00:16:37:20
Keith
So you can imagine tiny Jordan, 140lb Jordan, probably shit a brick at that point because he’s looking at over two years in federal pound me in the ass prison. The court also says you have restitution to the tune of about
00:16:37:20 – 00:16:48:36
Keith
$950,000, which was the amount that he stole from his victims. And then they go on and they list all the victims and it’s just initials.
00:16:48:41 – 00:17:11:51
Keith
Let me give you a little bit of high and low. I see some victims in here have 47,000 stolen from them. There’s some other victims in here in the 20 to 30000. Here’s one for a 60,000, one for 72,000. And then there’s some lower amounts there, some 1600 amount.
00:17:11:51 – 00:17:14:35
Keith
That’s probably the lowest. There’s another one that’s about 7000.
00:17:14:40 – 00:17:38:35
Keith
So it’s the range of victims that he has to pay back. And that’s it. That’s the end of our case. I hope you enjoyed it. Here’s some final thoughts. One is SIM swapping continues to be a problem. That’s the whole reason why I chose this case was to re highlight SIM swapping. Simply paying off or tricking a phone company.
00:17:38:40 – 00:17:59:43
Keith
It works for criminals. You saw it work and they made $1,000,000 here. So it works. This case was unique in that Jordan pled guilty before he was even arrested, it seems, because it seems like he came and said, hey, I’m willing to plead guilty. And the whole court process started at the same time. And the the plea was there and
00:17:59:43 – 00:18:02:54
Keith
it was done and over a year very, very quickly.
00:18:02:54 – 00:18:17:31
Keith
I just thought it was interesting 30 months you can kind of look at it as it’s a lot you know for someone that’s 140 lbs. Yeah that’s a lot. But also 30 months, not a lot when you compare it up to some of the other sentences that we’ve seen in the other cases that I brought to you in previous weeks,
00:18:17:31 – 00:18:33:20
Keith
and I could not help this whole time, it felt like Jordan Persad’s background reminded me so much of Jimmy Zhong, which was he was a subject of our Season two episode one where he has social issues, he had
00:18:33:20 – 00:18:59:59
Keith
weight issues and he had family issues. And it seems like Jordan had had the similar type of issues in here. And I think that’s very common for electronic criminals that work that work in these sort of crimes that we’ve been bringing you. So if you haven’t yet, please do give. Season two Episode one Episode one with Jimmy Zhong a listen because it’s a it’s an incredible episode.
00:19:00:04 – 00:19:22:48
Keith
So with that, if there’s anything you liked in this episode, please like subscribe, follow, thumbs up, whatever it is on your application that you’re watching me on. I try to push this out on several different applications like Facebook, LinkedIn, audio podcasts. I do it on YouTube. So I try to hit on a bunch of them, whatever it is, please, whatever
00:19:22:48 – 00:19:48:09
Keith
positive thing that helps me out, lets people see this that haven’t seen this before. If you haven’t been to our website, please do. I’ve got all our social media links across the top there. It’s eCrimeBytes dot com bytes spelled the computer way b y as in yellow milk t e s dot com. And if you are now confused of why I say y as in yellow milk, fuck you because I gave it to you in act one.
00:19:48:09 – 00:20:07:58
Keith
So if you didn’t watch Act One, you got to go back. I explain. I even gave you pictures of yellow milk of why I keep saying this. So if you’re confused now of why I’m saying this, please go back to Act one of this episode because I explained it over again. All right. So with that, let me give you a real quick preview of next week.
00:20:07:58 – 00:20:30:33
Keith
Next week, I’m bringing you pandemic fraud and Guns with Jovaughn E Turner. And this is a pretty interesting case because it not only involves fraud, it involves social media accounts housing the evidence of said crimes.
00:20:30:38 – 00:20:51:02
Keith
I’m trying not to give too much away at this point, but also someone fucking dies in this. Yes, you have to tune in. You have to tune in because that was an absolute plot twist for me that I found near the end of the research. And I went, Holy shit, did not see that coming. Maybe I did because guns is in the title.
00:20:51:07 – 00:21:01:04
Keith
Who knows? But please tune in next week. This is another really crazy episode that I’m going to have a lot of fun bringing to you. So hope to see you there. All right. Thanks. Bye.
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