A Palm Coast man charged in federal court in the theft of at least $800,000 in cryptocurrency will remain in custody.
Noah Michael Urban, 19, who was arrested Jan. 10, was ordered to remain detained during a hearing Friday before Magistrate Judge Joel B. Toomey in federal court in Jacksonville.
Urban was indicted on eight counts of wire fraud, one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and five counts of aggravated identity theft, according to a Jan. 11 announcement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Florida.
Urban faces up to 20 years in federal prison on each wire fraud charge and a minimum mandatory penalty of two years in prison for the aggravated identity theft.
Urban, who is also known as “Sosa,” “Elijah,” “King Bob” and “Anthony Ramirez,” was arrested Tuesday.
Urban committed wire fraud and identify theft, resulting in the theft of at least $800,000 in cryptocurrency from at least five different victims between August 2022 and March 2023, according to the indictment.
Urban and other conspirators unlawfully obtained victims’ personal identifying information and used it to fraudulently access their virtual currency addresses, according to the indictment.
Using a SIM swap, the conspirators reset the victims’ passwords and verified ownership of the victims’ cellphone numbers by one-time passwords. A SIM swap is a type of fraud in which conspirators take over a person’s cellphone account so that the victim’s incoming messages and texts are sent to a different phone. Once the SIM is swapped, the person can access the victim’s accounts, including those that use two-factor authentication.
Once they accessed the victims’ phones, Urban and other conspirators unlawfully transferred the victims’ cryptocurrency to cryptocurrency wallets controlled by the defendants, according to the indictment.
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