AUSTIN, Texas – A Round Rock man was sentenced in a federal court in Austin to 24 months in
prison for conspiracy to commit wire fraud.
According to court documents, from August 2019 to February 2021, Daniel Akira Mills, 22,
participated in a criminal wire fraud conspiracy that employed SIM swaps to defraud victims of
hundreds of thousands of dollars in property. Participants in the scheme gained unauthorized access
to online accounts of victims through a cyber intrusion technique referred to as “SIM swapping.”
During a SIM swap attack, cyber threat actors gain control of a victim’s mobile phone number by
linking that number to a subscriber identity module (SIM) card controlled by the threat actors,
resulting in the victim’s calls and messages being routed to a device controlled by the threat actors.
The threat actors then use control of the victim’s mobile phone number to obtain unauthorized access
to accounts held by the victim that are registered to the mobile phone number. Among other things,
scheme participants posted unauthorized messages on their victims’ social media accounts and
posted private photographs stolen from the accounts of celebrities. They also stole more than
$600,000 in cryptocurrency from dozens of victims nationwide.
In addition to imposing a prison sentence, the court ordered Mills to pay more than $530,000 in
restitution to the victims.
“We now run much of our lives through smartphones. From social media to managing our finances,
they have become essential tools. This can be very helpful, but also comes with many risks,” said
U.S. Attorney Jaime Esparza for the Western District of Texas. “By ‘SIM swapping,’ or stealing
the phone numbers of victims to assume their identities, Mills and his cohorts defrauded innocent
members of society and caused great harm. My office will not hesitate to hold fraudsters like Mills
accountable for their irresponsible destructive actions.”
The U.S. Secret Service and the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office’s REACT Task Force
investigated the case.
Assistant U.S. Attorney G. Karthik Srinivasan prosecuted the case.
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