‘A nightmare’: SIM card swap scam hits Toronto-area couple for more than $140,000

globalnews.ca:

Wayne Stork and his wife Diana had not heard of the SIM swap scam until they became victims.The Greater Toronto Area couple did nothing wrong but they lost about $140,000 anyway.“It’s a nightmare,” Wayne told Global News in a television interview, his wife Diana at his side.“We’re doing this, in part, to get the word out,” Diana said.The Storks are longtime customers of Freedom Mobile. Last September, when the couple were at home, Wayne’s phone suddenly stopped working.“My phone went into SOS mode, it was deactivated,” he said.From that point, Wayne had no use of the phone, but someone else had access to the personal information attached to it.“He (Wayne) was watching his accounts drain of money, that’s when the panic set in,” Diana said.Over the next 24 hours, scammers had gained access to Wayne’s stock trading account and other accounts, including a cryptocurrency one that contained the proceeds from an inheritance.“The Bitcoin was worth $140,000, and we lost that,” Diana said.When the couple called Freedom Mobile’s customer service line, they say a representative said records showed someone had obtained a new SIM card in a retail location in Toronto, apparently claiming to be Stork.Stork says the phone representative asked “weren’t you in the store yesterday to get a new SIM card?” to which Stork said no, it wasn’t him.A SIM swap scam can take different forms.