SIM scammer's sentence increased to 12 years, after failing to pay back victim $20 million

Remember well-heeled Manhattan resident Nicholas Truglia?

Back in 2022, we told you how he had been sentenced to prison for his part in orchestrating a SIM swap scam that stole US $22 million in cryptocurrency.

It was quite the downfall for the plucky scammer who on the day of the theft had allegedly bragged to his father and friends about how much cryptocurrency had been stolen, and offered to take them to the Super Bowl with "porn star escorts."

You may even recall the shock felt by many observers when Truglia was sentenced to just 18 months in prison, after stealing so much crypto.

Well now a US federal judge has massively increased the scammer's sentence, after Truglia failed to honour an agreement to pay back more than US $20 million in restitution.

At the time of his sentencing in 2022, Truglia was given 60 days to pay US $20,379,007 in restitution to Michael Terpin, a cryptocurrency investor and CEO of a PR company. Truglia was also ordered to forfeit US $983,010.72, and to spend three years 'on supervised release after his 18 months' incarceration.

Court records claimed that Truglia's other targets included 0Chain CEO Saswatu Basu; Gabrielle Katsnelson, the co-founder and COO of SMBX (Small & Medium Business Exchange), and hedge funder Myles Danielsen.

You might think that US $20 million was a large amount of money for anyone to pay back.

But at the time of his original sentencing Truglia was shown to own assets worth a stonking US $61,830,828.10 including crypto, art and jewellery. In a court statement Truglia told victims that he was going to "give my best effort to try and [right] my wrongs to you in anyway that's possible moving forward."

According to reports from the US District Court Northern District of New York, Truglia has "failed to pay one cent of his restitution obligation."

Truglia claims that most of his wealth is tied up in a cryptocurrency account that he cannot access, but US District Judge Alvin Hellerstein refuted the argument that he had no access to funds:

"You didn't have a job, but you lived in splendour."

The US Department of Justice successfully argued that Truglia had willfully failed to make restitution for the crimes he committed, and noted that his original 18 month sentence was based on his promise to repay — something, they argued, he clearly had no intention of doing.

The significant increase in Truglia's sentence reflects the increasingly aggressive stance being taken by US courts when it comes to restitution in cryptocurrency fraud cases. Scammers can try to hide behind encrypted wallets and feigned amnesia, but judges want criminals to understand that if they steal millions and fail to pay it back, sentences will be re-examined.

And once again, all of us are reminded of the threat of SIM swapping - where cybercriminals seize control of a phone number and bypass rudimentary two-factor authentication methods to sometimes steal millions.