Three people were charged on Wednesday with the theft of $400 million from FTX as part of a lengthy investigation.

The US federal government filed an 18-page indictment against Emily Hernandez, Carter Rohn, and Robert Powell. They were accused in a D.C. court of identity theft and conspiracy to commit wire fraud. The case against them includes 50 victims as part of a ring of SIM swapping that occurred for two years between 2021 and 2023.

The trio are accused of stealing $400 million from a company that was not identified in the court statement. The company is purported to be FTX, according to Bloomberg’s sources. If true, the theft would have happened as FTX was falling apart. The crypto exchange company was worth billions at one time, but over the course of a few days, it all collapsed. This was partly due to massive user withdrawals after questionable financial valuations were brought to light, and the third largest crypto currency exchange fell, damaging the confidence of consumers in the crypto market.

The Hackers’ Scheme

The accusation says that these three individuals worked with an FTX employee and used AT&T account information, and then they were able to transfer millions of dollars’ worth of crypto coins into private accounts unnoticed. Allegedly, they then intercepted AT&T customers’ text messages and phone calls to hack into their accounts and steal cryptocurrency from there. They intercepted numerous communications without the knowledge of the victims to take money gradually during the period in question.

The fact that these criminals have been identified as Americans makes it easy for the US government to deal with them quickly and not have to involve other countries and extradition treaties, as was previously feared when Russians were suspected of involvement.

If they are found guilty, it will finally answer the question of who siphoned off all those millions as the company was filing for bankruptcy. There are many questions lingering from FTX’s collapse, but this has been perhaps the most nagging one.