OG thieves get prison time

A couple of guys from Brockton and Rockport were sentenced to federal prison today for a phone-based hacking scheme to steal people's social-media accounts and then use those to grab some cryptocurrency.

A federal judge in Boston sentenced Eric Meiggs, 25, of Brockton to two years and one day in prison and Declan Harrington, 22, of Rockport to two years and seven days in prison, according to the US Attorney's office in Boston. Both had earlier pleaded guilty to ne count of conspiracy, four counts of wire fraud, one count of computer fraud and abuse and one count of aggravated identity theft. Harrington also pleaded guilty to an additional count of wire fraud.

The US Attorney's office in Boston reports:

Beginning in November 2017, Harrington, Meiggs and co-conspirators targeted victims who were believed to have had significant amounts of cryptocurrency and those who had high value or “OG” (slang for “Original Gangster”) social media account names. Using an illegal practice known as “SIM-swapping,” Harrington, Meiggs and others conspired to hack into and take control of these victims’ online accounts to obtain things of value, including OG social media account names and cryptocurrency.

The feds continue:

"SIM swapping" attacks involve convincing a victim’s cell phone carrier to reassign the victim’s cell phone number from the SIM card inside the victim’s cell phone to the SIM card inside a cell phone controlled by the cybercriminals. The cybercriminals can then reset the victim’s account log-in credentials and use those credentials to access the victim’s account without authorization, or "hack into" the account.

The 2019 indictment against the two further defines OG:

When a social media handle is an especially short, common, or well known word or phrase, e.g. "@John," or "@awesome," the handle carries a particular cachet, because the ability to capture such a common word for individual use suggests that the user was an especially early adopter of that social media network. Such high value accounts are sometimes referred to as "OG accounts," with "OG," an acronym for "Original Gangster," referring to veteran gang member, or, in this case, veteran social media users. "OG accounts" are sometimes traded and/or offered for sale online.

The ring hit at least ten OG victims, and managed to make off with roughly $330,000 in cryptocurrency, according to a government sentencing recommendation, which states the two were less successful in attempts to wrangle another $200,000 from victims.

In one case, the two used a cryptocurrency-related business owner's purloined Facebook ID to convince a friend of his to send roughly $100,000 in Bitcoin because his hospitalized mother needed help. In fact, "the mother was not in the hospital, and Victim 3 had not requested help."

The US Attorney's office recommended a sentence of two years for each - less than the maximum potential penalty for their offenses.

In their own sentencing recommendations, lawyers for Meiggs and Harrington also urged the judge to sentence them to two years. They blamed their OG behavior on several factors, including being the product of broken homes, having various disorders, including ADHD, and being pot smokers. But the two have realized the error of their ways, have stayed off drugs, and gotten jobs, their attorneys wrote.