A man from Southern California received a prison sentence for stealing more than $1.8 million through bank fraud, identity theft, and mail theft.
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Oren David Sela, 36, of North Hills, usually preyed on people in and around Beverly Hills by taking mail and packages from their houses and utilizing their personal information to open fictitious bank accounts.
Sela would use stolen mail to get Social Security numbers, bank account numbers, debit card numbers, and other personal information between November 2021 and October 2023.
He gained access to the victims’ online bank and financial accounts by using their information.
According to federal officials, he occasionally used SIM-swapping, which is the illegal transfer of a victim’s phone number to a new SIM card or porting of the victim’s phone number to temporarily take control of their accounts in order to get around two-factor authentication measures.
In order to move funds into intermediary accounts under his control, Sela subsequently registered other accounts in the victims’ names.
According to court filings, “He withdrew money from those accounts or used them to make purchases or transfers. He also caused debit or credit cards linked to victim accounts to be issued to him, so he could spend directly from those cards.”
Sela used this technique to steal at least $1,818,369 from at least 62 victims, deceive banks, and make hundreds of fraudulent withdrawals and transfers.
Prosecutors claimed that he frequently purchased pricey items with the pilfered money, such as a watch that cost almost $17,000.
Sela had been arrested for similar offenses before. When he was apprehended in Beverly Hills in 2022, he was discovered in possession of about $25,000 in cash, a number of pricey pieces of jewelry, and multiple bogus debit and credit cards that belonged to four elderly victims.
Law enforcement discovered over $70,000 in cash, numerous expensive jewelry pieces, stolen mail, a wealth of stolen personal information, identification cards, debit and credit cards, banking information, and more during two different searches of his properties in 2022 and 2023 after he was released, according to officials.
Since October 2023, Sela has been in government detention. He entered a guilty plea to one count of aggravated identity theft and one count of bank fraud in October 2024.
He was given a 61-month sentence in federal prison and mandated to pay $1,818,369 in restitution on April 22.
The Beverly Hills Police Department and the U.S. Secret Service looked into the case.
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