Twitter Hacker Sentenced to 5 Years in Prison for $120,000 Crypto Scam

A U.K. citizen who took element in the significant July 2020 hack of Twitter has been sentenced to five years in prison in the U.S.

Joseph James O’Connor (aka PlugwalkJoe), 24, was awarded the sentence on Friday in the Southern District of New York, a little around a month after he pleaded guilty to the prison strategies. He was arrested in Spain in July 2021.

The infamous Twitter breach allowed the defendant and his co-conspirators to get unauthorized obtain to backend equipment applied by Twitter, abusing them to hijack 130 well-liked accounts to perpetrate a crypto rip-off that netted them about $120,000 in unlawful gains.

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“In other cases, the co-conspirators bought access to Twitter accounts to other people,” the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) said. “O’Connor communicated with other people with regards to acquiring unauthorized access to a wide variety of Twitter accounts, like accounts involved with public figures all-around the earth.”

The defendant has also been accused of orchestrating SIM swapping attacks to seize command of users’ Snapchat and TikTok accounts, and in a person case, even target a New York-based mostly cryptocurrency company to steal crypto truly worth somewhere around $794,000 at the time.

“Just after stealing and fraudulently diverting the Stolen Cryptocurrency, O’Connor and his co-conspirators laundered it by way of dozens of transfers and transactions and exchanged some of it for Bitcoin employing cryptocurrency trade companies,” the DoJ claimed.

“In the long run, a part of the Stolen Cryptocurrency was deposited into a cryptocurrency trade account controlled by O’Connor.”

Also in the list of offenses committed by O’Connor is cyberstalking two victims, like a minor in June and July 2020 by falsely boasting that the individual was creating threats to shoot people today in an try to incite a law enforcement reaction.

O’Connor, who explained his crimes had been “stupid and pointless,” according to TechCrunch, also faces three several years of supervised release following serving his jail phrase. He has also been ordered to forfeit $794,000.

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