Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast
This 15-Year-Old Teen Stole $24 Million - The Ellis Pinsky story
Mon, 21 Apr 2025
The Ellis Pinsky scandal centers on a high-profile cryptocurrency theft orchestrated by a teenager. In 2018, at just 15 years old, Pinsky, a high school student from Irvington, New York, masterminded a scheme to steal approximately $24 million in cryptocurrency from investor Michael Terpin.
Chapter 1: Who is Ellis Pinsky and how did his hacking journey begin?
Now his name is Ellis and this starts when Ellis is 13 living in Irvington, New York and Ellis is a normal teenager. But one day around 2016 he's playing Call of Duty Ghosts online and he's trash talking the other kids like, I'm doing your mom or whatever they say. And one of the guys he's talking trash to comes back and says, yo, how's the weather in Irvington? Which is where Ellis lives.
And Ellis is like, oh shit, how does this guy suddenly know where I live? Turns out this troll just used a free program to figure out Ellis's IP address. It's not really all that complex. But from here on, Ellis becomes fascinated with this ability to track down people's information online.
So for the next few months, he studies this extensively and he starts learning hacking skills and he eventually joins an online hacking group. And over time, he learns a skill that's going to make him a bit of money. How to steal people's username handles on Twitter and Instagram, which probably sounds stupid, but there's actually money in this.
Because if you own the Instagram handle like at John, then every person named John is going to want to buy it from you. So he learns how to hack people's accounts and steal their handles and he sells them and he starts making a little money on the side. However, a few thousand dollars at a time is just not enough for Ellis. He wants more.
Chapter 2: What is SIM swapping and how did Ellis use it to make money?
And through this hacker group, he learns a way to make millions called SIM swapping. And it works like this. Basically, you get someone working at a phone store like an AT&T store and you call them and you get them to link someone else's SIM card to your phone number. Once you do that, you have access to everything their phone is connected to. their email, sometimes their bank account.
And so Ellis, he starts combing through social media, looking for anyone who posts about working at a cell phone carrier store. Once he finds that person, he reaches out to them and he offers to pay them to connect someone else's SIM card to his phone number. And surprisingly, a ton of these cell phone carrier workers say, All right. And he does this scam for a while.
Then one day in 2018, Ellis is now 15 years old and someone from his hacker group reaches out to him and asks him specifically to hack this dude. His name's Turpin. And Turpin is an older rich guy and he's apparently nearly a billionaire. He has some kind of connection to Match.com or something.
Chapter 3: How did Ellis target Michael Terpin and execute the $24 million crypto theft?
So Ellis agrees to hack Turpin, and the next day he hits up one of his contacts who works at an AT&T phone store in Connecticut, and that contact ports Turpin's SIM card to a phone Ellis can access, and boom, he's in. So he and the other hacker, they start searching through all Turpin's stuff, and that is when they find an email account with a file that holds the keys to a bunch of crypto wallets.
Then Ellis and the other hacker, they start opening up these wallets and they unlock one that has roughly $24 million worth of crypto in it. $24 million, jackpot. And so boom, they steal all this crypto. Then they quickly recruit a bunch of their other hacker friends to start selling it off and exchanging it in order to launder it. One of those guys they recruit to help them is this guy, Nick.
And Nick's around 21 years old, and he's a party guy. You know, he's kind of a turd himself. But he does help launder the money, and he makes sure to keep around a million dollars of that money for himself. Because, you know, he's just that kind of guy. Regardless, the heist is officially complete.
Chapter 4: Who helped Ellis launder the stolen cryptocurrency and what happened after?
Ellis and the other hacker, they split the bulk of the loot, and Ellis ends up with close to $10 million worth of crypto. Meanwhile, Turpin... Turpin, he ain't no dummy. Pretty quickly, he realizes that $24 million in crypto is missing from his wallets and Bro is pissed and he vows to figure out who did this to him and take them down.
Now, being that Ellis is only 15 years old, he's not gonna invest all this new wealth he just got. He's not gonna like get a 401k or like diversify his bonds. No, no, he's gonna go spend it on some stupid shit. Like he buys a $50,000 watch. He takes out $100,000 in cash for some reason and he keeps it under his bed. He allegedly starts wearing Louis Vuitton and Supreme brand clothing.
He allegedly starts driving an Audi R8 and renting a private jet to fly to different places. Here's actually a picture of him popping bottles at the club in a club that I guess lets 15 year olds in. I'm not really sure how he got in, but he's in. Regardless, he's having fun and $10 million is a lot of money. And even though he stole it, to his credit, he's pretty sure that this was his last score.
After this, no more hacking, no more SIM swapping. After this, he is done. Meanwhile, Nick, he took his part of the money and he's been living it up too. Here he is popping bottles at the club. Here he is on a private jet. Here he is on a different private jet. Here he is tweeting about his new diamond watch. Here he is just standing there, just looking rich as .
So as you can see, these guys are living it up. And it seems like they're gonna get away with all this. Until... Until Nick screws it all up. See, bro isn't the most covert person in the world when it comes to keeping his crimes a secret. Like here he is tweeting, just a reminder that I sim swapped my own dad. And here he tweets, stole 24 million, but can't keep a friend.
And here, stole 24 million, but can't stay away from drugs. Stole 24 million, still a failure in the eyes of the world. Stole 24 million, Still can't stop stealing. Yeah, bro really needs to stop tweeting. Not to mention, Nick has no real job, yet he appears to the outside world to live this lavish lifestyle.
And people around him definitely start to notice this, like, damn, how's he getting all this money? And so eventually he gets on the radar of a federal task force whose job it is to investigate these kinds of crimes. And so they start investigating him for a different million dollar SIM swapping heist. And bam, they arrest him. Here's his mugshot.
And because they're investigating him for this, they search his iCloud backup file. And through this, they connect him to the $24 million in crypto that he and Ellis stole from Turpin. Now, from here, I don't know if Nick flips on Ellis. I mean, he probably does. I actually don't think they were very close friends in real life. I think they're just two hackers who happen to know each other.
But what I do know is that somehow Turpin, the older rich guy, he learns that Ellis was one of the ones who stole all this money from him, and he definitely isn't gonna let that slide. So a few months later, Ellis's mom randomly gets an email, and it's from Turpin's lawyer.
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