A 29-year-old man, Ho Jun Jia, from Singapore faces 34 years in prison after allegedly stealing Amazon AWS and Google Cloud computing power and services to mine crypto.
Ho Jun Jia was taken into the custody of the Singapore Police Force on September 26 after being charged under a 14-count indictment.
It has been reported that he stole credit card and identity information from residents in California, Texas, and India to run a large-scale crypto mining operation.
However, the mining of Bitcoin and Ethereum is noted as having taken place between October 2017 and February 2018.
In an unsealed indictment document, it read:
“Beginning in late 2017, which followed the surge in popularity of cryptocurrencies, Ho used victims’ personal and stolen credit card information, along with phony email addresses, which he created, designed to spoof the authentic email account of identity-theft victims, to open accounts and to obtain access to cloud computing services.”
During Ho’s illegal operation, he managed to rack up $5 million in unpaid cloud computing bills. Not only that, but a Department of Justice press release states that for a brief period, Ho’s operation was one AWS’ largest consumers of data usage by volume.
The Department of Justice release states that wire fraud is punishable by up to 20 years in prison. Access device fraud is punishable by up to 10 years in prison. Whereas, aggravated identity theft is punishable by a mandatory two years in prison, which can “run consecutive to any other sentence imposed in the case.”
<img src="https://www.cryptonewspoint.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/money.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-2980 lazyload" width="452" height="257" />
Likewise, according to the indictment, Ho made several unauthorized payments for goods and services on victims’ stolen credit cards.
On November 4, 2017, and on several dates thereafter, at least 16 payments were made for varying amounts, totaling around $240,000 to one of the victim’s credit card. However, some of the money went toward payment owed on the Google Cloud Services account and crypto mining expenses.
The indictment also reads:
“Such payments to Google include, but are not limited to, two payments totaling $40,000 on about February 20, 2018; two payments totaling $40,000 on February 21, 2018; and three attempted charges totaling $105,000 on about February 21, 2018.”
On December 3, 2017, it further reads that a payment amounting to $135,861.12 was charged to a victim’s credit card toward the balance owed on the Amazon Web Services account.
Source: bitcoinist.com and documentcloud.org
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