A British national tied to the Scattered Spider cybercrime group pleaded guilty to hacking multiple companies via SMS phishing and stealing over $8 million in virtual currency from US victims.
Tyler Robert Buchanan, 24, of Dundee, Scotland, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and aggravated identity theft.
In November 2024, US authorities unsealed criminal charges against Buchanan and four other alleged members of the Scattered Spider group, accusing them of using phishing text messages to steal employee credentials, breach company systems and steal cryptocurrency.
According to court documents, Buchanan and his co-conspirators conducted cyber intrusions and virtual currency thefts between September 2021 and April 2023.
The victims included interactive entertainment, telecommunications and technology companies, as well as business process outsourcing (BPO) and IT service providers, cloud communications firms, virtual currency companies and individual victims.
“As part of the scheme, Buchanan and his co-conspirators conducted Short Message Service (SMS) phishing attacks by sending hundreds of SMS phishing messages to the mobile telephones of a victim company’s employees. The messages purported to be from the victim company or a contracted IT or BPO supplier for the victim company,” the Justice Department said.
“The SMS phishing messages contained links to phishing websites designed to look like legitimate websites of a victim company or a contracted IT or BPO supplier. The websites then lured the recipient into providing confidential information, including personal identifying information (PII), and account usernames and passwords.”
On a digital device found at Buchanan’s residence in Scotland, police discovered the names and addresses of numerous individual victims, including a text file containing cryptocurrency seed phrases and login information for one victim’s account.
Buchanan has been in federal custody since April 2025 and faces up to 22 years in federal prison.
Co-conspirator Noah Michael Urban is serving a 10-year federal prison sentence and was ordered to pay $13 million in restitution after pleading guilty in April 2025 to fraud-related charges. Three other defendants charged alongside Buchanan, including Ahmed Hossam Eldin Elbadawy, Evans Onyeaka Osiebo and Joel Martin Evans, still face criminal charges in the case.
Scattered Spider is a cybercrime collective, also known as UNC3944, Muddled Libra and Octo Tempest, made up largely of young, native English-speaking hackers who use social engineering, including impersonating IT and help-desk staff, to gain initial access, bypass MFA, and compromise enterprise networks.
Although authorities have increased pressure on the group and arrested several members, including four they consider responsible for ransomware attacks targeting UK-based retailers last year, the group continues to operate, with new members replacing those arrested.
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