A 25-year-old man has been jailed for 2 and a half years for his involvement in SIM-swap fraud, which noticed 4 individuals lose £200,000 value of crypto in November 2021.
In keeping with the Metropolis of London Police, Ajay Shinjin, also referred to as AJ Marley Cruz, acquired greater than £44,000 from the proceeds of crime and used the cash on luxurious holidays to Dubai, an costly condo, and gold-plated dental grills.
How the Swap Labored and The place the Cash Went
It started in early November 2021, when BT noticed unauthorized exercise on its programs. Buyer telephone numbers had been being moved onto SIM playing cards managed by criminals, a apply referred to as SIM swapping.
With a quantity below their management, the fraudsters may obtain one-time passcodes by textual content and use them to get right into a sufferer’s checking account or crypto pockets.
BT then recognized the units receiving the transferred numbers. Every was eSIM-enabled and had two IMEI numbers, the serial codes that establish a handset. Knowledge from the telecommunications firm led to a number of suspects, and Shinjin, aka AJ Marley Cruz, was attributed to 4 of the units.
All of the victims reported their crimes within the first week of November 2021, and police detailed 4 thefts, with the primary seeing about £40,000 in crypto taken from a sufferer on November 2, and roughly £27,000 of it landed in Shinjin’s private crypto account. A second sufferer misplaced round £17,000 between November 5 and seven, and all of which was later discovered within the defendant’s personal pockets. The 2 sums made up the £44,000 he acquired.
Within the different two circumstances, he helped to hold out the thefts whereas the cash went elsewhere. Some £8,000 left a 3rd sufferer’s Coinbase account on November 3, and one other £130,000 was stolen from a fourth sufferer on the sixth and seventh of the identical month.
Shinjin was arrested in October 2023 at Heathrow Airport when coming from Dubai, with prosecutors then charging him with one rely of conspiracy to commit fraud by false illustration and one in every of transferring prison property. He entered a responsible plea in late September 2026.
“This was a posh and calculated fraud that brought on vital monetary hurt to quite a lot of victims,” mentioned Detective Constable Simon Ardeman of the Metropolis of London Police.
He additionally referred to as SIM-swap fraud “a complicated and more and more regarding type of offending.” The detective constable added:
“This conviction sends a transparent message that those that use expertise to commit fraud might be dropped at justice.”
An Earlier UK Case
A a lot bigger UK crypto case reached a courtroom roughly a 12 months in the past, when Zhimin Qian, a Chinese language nationwide, pleaded responsible in late September 2025 to buying prison property within the type of crypto. That case was tied to what’s believed to be the world’s largest cryptocurrency seizure: greater than 61,000 BTC, value over £5.5 billion ($7.43 billion).
Qian had defrauded over 128,000 victims in China between 2014 and 2017 earlier than changing the proceeds into BTC. Will Lyne, the Metropolitan Police’s head of financial and cybercrime command, referred to as it one of many largest cash laundering circumstances in UK historical past.
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