The United States has sent a fourth member of the international hacking group known as The Community to prison.
Garrett Endicott of Warrensburg, Missouri, was the last of six defendants to be sentenced in connection with a multi-million-dollar SIM-swapping conspiracy that claimed victims across the country, including in California, Missouri, Michigan, Utah, Texas, New York and Illinois.
Endicott, along with 22-year-old Conor Freeman of Dublin, Ireland; Ricky Handschumacher, 28, of Pasco County, Florida; Colton Jurisic, 22, of Dubuque, Iowa; Reyad Gafar Abbas, 22, of Rochester, New York; and Ryan Stevenson, 29, of West Haven, Connecticut, was charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire fraud, and aggravated identity theft in a 15-count indictment unsealed on May 9, 2019.
After pleading guilty to the charges, 22-year-old Endicott was yesterday ordered to pay restitution in the amount of $121,549.37 and serve ten months behind bars by United States District Judge Denise Page Hood.
Members of The Community would gain control of a victim’s cell phone number, then use it to access the victim’s email accounts, cryptocurrency wallets, and cloud storage. By resetting passwords and requesting two-factor authentication codes, the hackers could bypass security measures and steal tens of millions of dollars worth of cryptocurrency.
“Individual victims lost crypto-currency valued, at the time of theft, ranging from under $2,000 to over $5m. The sentenced defendants were involved in total thefts ranging from approximately $50,000 to over $9m,” said the US Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Michigan.
Three of Endicott’s co-conspirators have already been handed custodial sentences in the United States. Handschumacher was sentenced to 48 months in prison and ordered to pay restitution in the amount of $7,681,570.03.
Jurisic was sentenced to 42 months in prison and ordered to pay restitution in the amount of $9,517,129.29, and Abbas was ordered to pay restitution in the amount of $310,791.90 and sentenced to 24 months in prison. Stevenson pleaded guilty and was sentenced to probation in the District of Connecticut.
In January, the United States withdrew its extradition request for Freeman after the hacker was sentenced to three years in prison in Ireland in November for stealing crypto-currency, dishonestly operating a computer to make a gain and knowingly engaging in the possession of the proceeds of crime.
