22-year-old British citizen Joseph James O'Connor is led by Spanish police officers as he leaves a courtroom after being arrested in connection with an alleged Twitter hack in July 2020 that compromised the accounts of high-ranking politicians and celebrities. profile, according to the United States Department of Justice, in Estepona, Spain, July 22, 2021. REUTERS / Jon Nazca
NEW YORK, Nov. 3 (Reuters) - A UK man previously accused in the United States of participating in hacking the Twitter accounts of politicians and celebrities was indicted on Wednesday for a separate scheme that resulted in the theft of $ 784,000 in cryptocurrencies.
US prosecutors in Manhattan said 22-year-old Joseph James O'Connor and his accomplices stole bitcoin, Ethereum and Litecoin after gaining control of the victims' cell phone numbers by linking them to subscriber identity module cards. or SIM cards.
O'Connor, also known as PlugwalkJoe, and his accomplices carried out so-called SIM swapping attacks targeting three executives from a Manhattan cryptocurrency company, stealing cryptocurrency from two clients and laundering what they stole, prosecutors said.
An attorney for O'Connor could not be immediately identified. Prosecutors said the plan ran from March to May 2019.
O'Connor has been awaiting a possible extradition from Spain after his July 21. arrest about a July 2020 hack that compromised dozens of Twitter accounts and allegedly generated more than $ 118,000 in bitcoins.
The accounts included those of current United States President Joe Biden, former President Barack Obama, Amazon.com's Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, Tesla's Elon Musk, reality TV star Kim Kardashian, and Ye, the rapper once known as Kanye West.
Graham Ivan Clark, the teenage brain accused of the Twitter hack, pleaded guilty in March in Florida state court and agreed to serve three years in juvenile prison.
Wednesday's charges against O'Connor include conspiracies to commit wire fraud and money laundering, each with a maximum prison sentence of 20 years, as well as aggravated identity theft and conspiracy to commit computer hacking.
Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Edited by David Gregorio
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