Noah Michael Urban, a 19 year old from the Jacksonville, FL area, is being charged with eight counts of wire fraud, five counts of aggravated identity theft, and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Urban is also known as “King Bob”, “Sosa”, “Gustavo Fring”, and “Elijah”. Those are some of the main facts of the case. However, a more detailed analysis causes some confusion as well as intrigue.
“Beginning on an unknown date, but no later than in or about August 2022, continuing through March 2023, in the Middle District of Florida and elsewhere, the defendant, Noah Michael Urban, did willfully combine, conspire, confederate, and agree with others, both known and unknown to the Grand Jury, to commit wire fraud…” (3). According to the indictment, Urban is believed to have stolen more than $800,000 by himself and an undisclosed amount with the group he was alleged to be with. However, several close sources that will remain anonymous, claim it was closer to $2 million.
Urban was also a popular music leaker under the previously mentioned name, “King Bob”. The name is a reference to the Despicable Me and Minions franchises. Urban is known to have leaked popular artists music such as Playboi Carti, Ariana Grande, and many others. It is unknown what connections and/or funds he had available initially to buy or negotiate for these songs. Some also speculated that he was also known as “Hells”, another popular music leaker.
He only leaked a few things for free, but many of the songs were community grails such as “She Might”, “Celine”, “Home (KOD) (ft. Lil Uzi Vert)”, etc. However, the vast majority of praise he received was from selling these songs in GBs and PBs. Songs that had people raving for the artist to release after they, or a 3rd party, preview it.
Now, how did he obtain these prestigious songs? Email hacking and SIM swapping. Email hacking has made its face familiar to many people for the past couple decades, so there is no need to explain that concept. The other method, SIM swapping, is a fairly new concept. The court document’s definition of a SIM swap is: “A SIM Swap was a cellular phone account takeover fraud that resulted in the routing of a victim’s incoming calls and text messages to a different phone. Once an individual swapped the SIM to link new identifiers to the same phone number, the individual could access a victim’s personal accounts, including email accounts, cryptocurrency exchange accounts, and other accounts that used 2FA,” (3). You can also obtain a victim’s files that are uploaded to cloud services like iCloud. Urban used this method to gain access to unreleased music as well as cryptocurrency accounts.
Someone tipped off Urban that the FBI was coming and he used a software on his computer that erased everything. It erased the unfound evidence of his alleged involvement and a treasure trove of unreleased music valued at around $200,000+.
After his arrest, the internet found pictures of him as well as his parent’s Facebook accounts that had pictures of the defendant on them. There is no confirmation, but many sources say that his parents disowned him after his arrest.
He was denied bond and will remain in jail until his trial, which is set for March of 2024. If he is convicted, he is facing up to ~185 years in federal prison as well as foreitures for all of the stolen funds.
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