A Florida man was sentenced to 120 months in prison for his role in the notorious cybercrime group Scattered Spider.
The individual, Noah Michael Urban, 20, of Palm Coast, Florida, was arrested in January 2024 and indicted in November 2024. Earlier this year, he pleaded guilty to wire fraud and identity theft.
Urban, known online as ‘Sosa’, ‘Elijah’, ‘King Bob’, and ‘Anthony Ramirez’, was sentenced to 10 years in prison, with three years of supervised release, and ordered to pay $13 million in restitution, Florida news outlet News4Jax reports.
According to court documents, between August 2022 and March 2023, Urban conspired with other individuals to steal at least $800,000 from five victims’ cryptocurrency accounts, through SIM swapping.
As part of these attacks, cybercriminals convince telecom operators to transfer a victim’s phone number to a SIM card in their control, which then allows them to initiate password resets for the victim’s accounts and take them over.
The Scattered Spider group, also tracked as Muddled Libra, Oktapus, Scatter Swine, Starfraud, and UNC3944, is known for a massive 2022 phishing campaign targeting over 130 organizations.
Investigative journalist Brian Krebs notes that Urban was also an active member of the Star Fraud hacking group, which focused on SIM swapping attacks, and which is believed to be responsible for cyberattacks against Caesars Entertainment and MGM Resorts.
Urban reportedly called the sentence unjust, saying that the judge was biased because another Scattered Spider member hacked his email account while Urban was in federal custody.
As part of the hacking incident, a threat actor impersonating the judge called the contractor that handles passwords for the court and requested a password change. The hacker then accessed the judge’s email account and stole a copy of Urban’s sealed indictment.
Earlier this year, the Scattered Spider group was blamed for a series of attacks against UK retailers. Cybersecurity firms and US government agencies issued several warnings regarding the group’s targeting of retailers and insurance organizations in the US.
Related: Help Desk at Risk: Scattered Spider Shines Light on Overlook Threat Vector
Related: Scattered Spider Activity Drops Following Arrests, but Others Adopting Group’s Tactics
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