An icon in the shape of a person's head and shoulders. It often indicates a user profile.It was a Friday in July when I first noticed something seemed off. I was spending some time with my family on a gorgeous summer day, swimming and drinking beer and ignoring my phone as much as possible. When I finally checked my notifications, I had two alerts from Verizon. Both contained authorization codes — the kind of security measure they take when you make changes to your account.
SIM swapping hasn't been around long. It started in about 2018 as a way for gamers to steal other people's cryptocurrency, which is pretty easy to do once you have full access to someone's phone. But now, experts say, the crime has become more pervasive — and far more organized. In 2021, the FBI reports, SIM swaps robbed victims of more than $68 million.
Verizon immediately deactivated the phone that belonged to the hacker and reinstated mine. But the employee I talked to warned me that this was probably just the beginning of the scam.Once the hacker had control of my phone number, they didn't waste much time. They left the Verizon store and went to a nearby Apple store, where they used my Chase credit card to spend $6,370. Then they drove to a mall across town to shop at Gucci, where they made two separate transactions totaling $2,956.
That mystery was fairly easily solved. But there was something else I couldn't figure out: How did the hacker make so many purchases on my card in the first place? I could see in my account that the charges had occurred at physical stores, not online. The hacker never logged into my iCloud account to set up Apple Pay, and my credit card had been safely tucked into my wallet the entire time.
Disheartened, I hung up. I wasn't any closer to finding out how the thief had gotten hold of my card. As it turned out, I had spoken too soon. A few weeks later, I got a letter from the Chase fraud department. We changed our minds, it said. We don't believe you that these charges were fraudulent. We're holding you responsible for paying them.
Then, out of the blue, I got another lucky break. After Chase told me I'd be held responsible for the charges, I had begged them to reopen my fraud case and check again. I sent them a folder with every shred of evidence I had. There was a screenshot of the receipt when the hacker activated my phone in Columbus, hundreds of miles from where I was at the time.