New frontier for the tech police: SIM swaps, cryptocurrency busts
Standing near the LAX security check, Santa Clara County sheriff ’s Sgt. Samy Tarazi waited for the suspected bitcoin thief to emerge.
He had been tracking the 20-year-old Boston college student for months and now Tarazi and his team were about to make one of the first arrests of its kind in the country.
When his investigation started, Tarazi knew little of the famed cryptocurrency or notorious SIM swapping tactic that hackers use to take over people’s smartphones — and essentially their digital lives.
He learned on the fly after a Bay Area bitcoin investor reported a theft earlier this year. Now here he was watching Joel Ortiz appear from behind the security line, decked out in Gucci clothing, flashing the lavish lifestyle — including posh mansion rentals — that he reportedly enjoyed thanks to the millions of dollars he is charged with pilfering from more than a dozen victims from the Bay Area to Southern California.
“These are kids with millions in their pockets for five minutes of work,” Tarazi said. “In this case, the suspects weren’t covering their tracks incredibly well.”
Tarazi is a detective for the Santa Clara County-based Regional Enforcement Allied Computer Team — one of a small number of similar task forces in the country. There are only five in California where local law enforcement officers take on sophisticated tech crimes that historically have been the domain of federal agencies like the FBI or U.S. Secret Service.
“Right now when you’re a victim, in most cases when you go to local law enforcement, they’re not going to do much for you,” said professor Lorrie Faith Cranor, director of the CyLab Usable Privacy and Security Laboratory at Carnegie Mellon University. “Maybe if there’s a physical store where the SIM swapping is happening, but short of that, they don’t seem to get involved.”
Deputy District Attorney Erin West said the REACT task force is one example of local police and prosecutors trying to turn that tide.
“These crimes can happen to anyone who has a cell phone. It’s invasive,” she said. “REACT is really on the forefront of having investigatory skills and per-