The U.S. Division of Justice (DOJ) has charged three americans with orchestrating a SIM-swapping scheme to empty $400 million from FTX merely hours after the crypto alternate filed for Chapter 11 financial waste protection.

In a Jan. 24 indictment with a District Court in Washington, prosecutors charged Robert Powell, Carter Rohn and Emily Hernandez with executing SIM-swap assaults to take the identities of 50 victims between 2021 and 2023.

A SIM-swap assault is implemented when a hacker convinces a telecom provider to swap a cell numbers to the SIM in the hacker’s possession, after which he or she can swap the passwords to all accounts that need multi-component authentication.

The indictment particulars how Hernandez impersonated an employee at “Victim Firm 1” and Powell won gain admission to to its AT&T chronicle. Along with Rohn, the co-conspirators allegedly “transferred over $400 million in digital currency” from the alternate’s wallets to their non-public accounts.

Blockchain analytics firm Elliptic eminent in a Feb. 1 blog put up that it seemed seemingly that FTX turned into the “Victim Firm-1” named in the indictment. This turned into confirmed by a Bloomberg document, citing two americans conscious of the case.

The total contributors named in the indictment are U.S. voters and own been charged with wire fraud conspiracy and identity theft.

The revelations from the indictment moreover build to bed so much of theories that the FTX hacker turned into an insider, with many industry watchers speculating that the person in the wait on of the hack will own been used CEO Sam Bankman-Fried himself.

The hackers own moreover been noticed on-chain sending funds via crypto mixing companies tackle RenBridge, nevertheless own misplaced at least $94 million when making an are attempting to launder funds in the first few days after the hack.