A British national extradited to the US last month has pleaded guilty in New York to a role in one of the biggest hacks in social media history, the July 2020 Twitter hack that affected over 130 accounts including those of Barack Obama and Joe Biden.
Joseph James O’Connor, aged 23, known as PlugwalkJoe, pleaded guilty to hacking charges carrying a total maximum sentence of over 70 years in prison.
The hacking was part of a large-scale Bitcoin scam, reports the BBC. O’Connor was charged alongside three other men. US teenager Graham Ivan Clark pleaded guilty in 2021. Nima Fazeli of Orlando, Florida, and Mason Sheppard, of Bognor Regis in the UK, were charged with federal crimes.
O’Connor, who was extradited from Spain, hijacked numerous Twitter accounts and sent out tweets asking followers to send Bitcoin to an account, promising to double their money.
In 2020, an estimated 350 million Twitter users saw suspicious tweets from official accounts of the platform’s biggest users. Thousands fell for a scam, trusting that a crypto giveaway was real.
O’Connor’s admission has not come as a shock though as there was a wealth of evidence in the public domain thanks to the hackers making some bad mistakes or being too loud in their celebrations in the aftermath of the hack.
The US justice department declared he had also used technology to stalk a minor.
