Crypto scammer Nicholas Truglia sentenced to 12 years in prison for failing to pay $20m restitution

Hacker Nicholas Truglia’s 18-month prison sentence has been upgraded to 12 years after he failed to pay $20 million in restitution for the victim of a SIM-swap he conducted back in 2018.

According to a report by the Inner City Press, a New York federal judge revised Truglia’s initial 18-month sentence to 12 years on July 10 after he failed to pay the mandated $20 million in restitution to his victim, crypto investor and promoter Michael Terpin.

The new sentence exceeds federal guidelines by a significantly large margin, more than eight times the original sentence. The law recommends an extended sentencing to be between 51 and 63 months.

However in Truglia’s case, he allegedly moved his stolen funds around and converted them to Bitcoin (BTC) and took a cut for himself, thereby violating his terms. A damning video of him speaking in a masked voice about how he would still get to keep his stolen crypto even after being in prison for 10 years convinced the judge to extend it to 12 years in prison.

“If ten years are okay, I’ll be sentencing you to twelve [years],” said Senior Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein.

Judge Hellerstein said Nicholas Truglia would be taken to the Metropolitan Detention Center but kept in solitary confinement overnight. He would then be returned to the Southern District of New York courthouse the following day and transported to a correctional center in Essex.

Nicholas Truglia’s arrest chronology

Nicholas Truglia was initially released from prison after serving 12 months of his sentence, under the condition that he had to repay the $20 million in damages to Michael Terpin. However, he failed to do so even after his release.

Truglia was arrested again in May 2023 for allegedly violating terms of his supervised release after evidence surfaced of him moving around his crypto funds and purchasing luxury goods.

Despite a contempt order, Truglia was released in November 2024 after the presiding judge allowed him to roam free as long as he was committed to paying his $20 million restitution. Instead he failed to do so and retained approximately $673,000 from cuts made.

Back in December 2022, then-25-year-old Nicholas Truglia was sentenced to prison for 18 months for his participation in a SIM swap crypto scam that stole over $20 million worth of cryptocurrency from crypto investor Michael Terpin.

He was able to gain access to the victim’s emails and other accounts by hijacking the Terpin’s phone number by replacing it with a SIM card he controlled.