British citizen who participated in massive Twitter hack in July 2020 sentenced to 5 years in prison in the US
Joseph James O’Connor, aka Plugwalk Joe, 24, was sentenced in the Southern District of New York on Friday, just over a month after pleading guilty to criminal conspiracy. He was arrested in Spain in July 2021.
This infamous Twitter breach allowed the defendants and their co-conspirators to gain unauthorized access to the backend tools used by Twitter, which they abused to take over 130 popular accounts and gain an illegal profit of around $120,000 cryptocurrency. committed fraud.
“In other instances, the co-conspirators sold access to Twitter accounts to others,” the U.S. Department of Justice said. “Mr O’Connor has communicated with others regarding purchasing unauthorized access to various Twitter accounts, including accounts associated with celebrities around the world.”
Defendants are also accused of orchestrating SIM-swapping attacks to take control of users’ Snapchat and TikTok accounts, including in one case targeting a New York-based cryptocurrency company worth about $794,000 at the time. I also stole cryptocurrencies.
“After stealing and misappropriating the stolen cryptocurrency, O’Connor and his co-conspirators laundered the cryptocurrency through dozens of transfers and transactions, using cryptocurrency exchange services to transfer some of it to Bitcoin. ,” the Department of Justice said.
“Ultimately, some of the stolen cryptocurrency was deposited into an O’Connor-controlled cryptocurrency exchange account.”
Also on the list of crimes committed by O’Connor are two people, including minors, who made false claims in June and July 2020 that they would shoot people to incite a law enforcement response. It also includes cyberstalking the victim of
According to TechCrunch, O’Connor called his crimes “stupid and pointless” and is subject to three years of supervised release after serving his sentence. He was also ordered to forfeit $794,000.
