A teenager has been arrested in Canada for allegedly stealing CAD $46 million ($36.5 million), Hamilton police announced earlier this week.

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The victim got his cryptocurrency stolen via a SIM swap attack, a method that allows scammers to hijack accounts by manipulating cellular network employees to duplicate phone numbers so that they can acquire the two-factor authentication requests and gain access to their victim’s account.

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Originally, the teenager was arrested for a theft exceeding $5,000. Hamilton Police is calling the theft the “biggest cryptocurrency theft reported from one person”.

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Det. Constable Kirkpatrick commented on the rise of cybercrime recently, saying, “Educating our society with the dos and don’ts, like making sure you have multifactor authentication with your social media and e-mail and financial accounts is very important. And making sure you’re using different passwords for all your different accounts,” he said. “Make sure that if one place is breached and your password gets out there, not all of your accounts are compromised as a result of that. The education piece around cyber crime in its initial state is very important.”

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