Twitter hacker and crypto fraudster sentenced to five years in prison
On Friday, a federal court to five years in prison for his involvement in . Last month, the 24-year-old, known as PlugwalkJoe online, to a series of cyber crimes, including carrying out a SIM-swapping attack that targeted a TikTok account with millions of followers. The 2020 Twitter hack saw O’Conner and his co-perpetrators gain access to the company’s backend and then the accounts of Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Barack Obama and more than 100 other high-profile users. O’Conner received $794,000 in crypto fraud that followed.
“After stealing and fraudulently diverting the stolen cryptocurrency, O̵[ads1]7;Connor and his co-conspirators 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.” In 2021, Graham Ivan Clark, the alleged teenager behind the breach, against a three-year prison term. In addition to the five-year sentence, O’Conner also faces three years of supervised release after the prison sentence. He must also forfeit the $794,000 he defrauded during the hack.
