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SIM-Swap Fraudster Who Spent Stolen Crypto on Gold Grills and Dubai Trips Jailed
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- DeepHorus
London man Ajay Shinjin, 25, has been jailed for two and a half years over a SIM-swap fraud that stole almost £200,000 ($265,000) in cryptocurrency. Known as AJ Marley Cruz, he was sentenced at Inner London Crown Court. He pleaded guilty on September 28 to conspiracy to commit fraud and transferring criminal property.
In a SIM-swap attack, criminals have a victim's phone number transferred to a SIM card they control. They then intercept one-time passcodes sent by banks and crypto platforms by text message. This lets them bypass account protections and drain funds. Shinjin helped execute the scheme across multiple victims.
BT identified unauthorised activity on its systems in early November 2021, finding customer numbers moved to criminals' SIM cards. Its data on the traced devices led police to several suspects. Shinjin was linked to four of those devices.
One victim lost about £40,000 in crypto on November 2, 2021, with roughly £27,000 reaching Shinjin's personal account. A second victim lost about £17,000, all of which ended up in his wallet. He also took roughly £8,000 from a third victim's Coinbase account and helped steal about £130,000 from a fourth.
Shinjin received more than £44,000 of the stolen funds, spending it on Dubai holidays, a high-end Canary Wharf apartment and gold-plated teeth grills. He was first arrested at his flat in 2021. Officers re-arrested him at Heathrow Airport in October 2023 as he returned from Dubai after further evidence emerged.
Detective Constable Simon Ardeman called SIM-swap fraud a sophisticated and increasingly concerning form of offending with devastating consequences. Cifas reported that unauthorised SIM swap cases in the UK's National Fraud Database rose 402% in the first half of 2026. Norton's Mark Birchall urges using authentication apps, separate carrier PINs and account takeover protection instead of relying on phone numbers.
