A UK citizen who participated in the massive Twitter hack in July 2020 has been sentenced to five years in prison in the US.
Joseph James O'Connor (also known as PlugwalkJoe), 24, was sentenced Friday in the Southern District of New York, just over a month ago. after he pleaded guilty to criminal schemes. He was arrested in Spain in July 2021.
The infamous Twitter breach allowed the defendant and his accomplices to gain unauthorized access to back-end tools used by Twitter, abusing them to hijack 130 popular accounts to perpetrate a crypto scam that netted them around $120,000 in illegal profits.
"In other cases, co-conspirators sold access to Twitter accounts to others," the US Department of Justice (DoJ) said. saying. "O'Connor has reached out to others regarding the purchase of unauthorized access to a variety of Twitter accounts, including accounts associated with public figures from around the world."
The defendant has also been accused of orchestrating SIM swapping attacks to seize control of users' Snapchat and TikTok accounts and, in one case, even targeting a New York-based cryptocurrency company to steal cryptocurrency for a Approximate value of $794,000 at the time.
"After fraudulently stealing and diverting the stolen cryptocurrency, O'Connor and his accomplices laundered it through dozens of transfers and transactions and exchanged some of it for Bitcoin using cryptocurrency exchange services," the Justice Department said.
"Ultimately, a portion of the stolen cryptocurrency was deposited into a cryptocurrency exchange account controlled by O'Connor."
Also on the list of crimes committed by O'Connor is the cyberstalking of two victims, including a minor, in June and July 2020 by falsely claiming that the individual was threatening to shoot people in an attempt to incite a police response. .
O'Connor, who called his crimes "stupid and pointless," according According to TechCrunch, he also faces three years of supervised release after serving his jail term. He was also ordered to forfeit $794,000.
