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New episode · September 30

175 Bitcoin, 150 Shoes, and a Muhammad Ali Painting | 2 Minute Drill with Drex DeFord

Prosecutors filed a forfeiture list for a 24-year-old from College Station, Texas, named Ahmed Hossam Eldin Elbadawy: 175 Bitcoin, 1,300 Ethereum, gold jewelry, luxury watches, designer handbags, 150 pairs of shoes, and a painting of Muhammad Ali. Drex DeFord says Elbadawy was an early member of Scattered Spider, a crew whose best weapon was a phone call. They rang a company's IT desk, sounded like a stressed-out employee locked out of an account, and talked a real person into resetting a password or waving through a multi-factor prompt. Prosecutors say he and his co-conspirators hit at least a dozen companies and 29 victims across entertainment, telecom, cloud, and healthcare, including $6.3 million in crypto one morning in September 2021 and $1.7 million on another hit. He pled guilty about a year ago. The plea stayed fairly quiet until this month, when prosecutors moved to seize the pile. Drex puts that pile at around $17.6 million. Scattered Spider members pointed the same phone-call playbook at hospitals, including some of the largest health systems, as far back as 2024. Same move: call the help desk, sound like staff, get in. In this Two Minute Drill, Drex asks whether someone could talk your help desk into a password reset just by sounding like a doctor in a hurry, what proof the team demands, and whether they do that check every time. Remember, Stay a Little Paranoid.