A U.Ok. citizen who took half within the huge July 2020 hack of Twitter has been sentenced to 5 years in jail within the U.S.
Joseph James O’Connor (aka PlugwalkJoe), 24, was awarded the sentence on Friday within the Southern District of New York, a little bit over a month after he pleaded responsible to the felony schemes. He was arrested in Spain in July 2021.
The notorious Twitter breach allowed the defendant and his co-conspirators to acquire unauthorized entry to backend instruments utilized by Twitter, abusing them to hijack 130 in style accounts to perpetrate a crypto rip-off that netted them about $120,000 in unlawful earnings.
“In different cases, the co-conspirators offered entry to Twitter accounts to others,” the U.S. Division of Justice (DoJ) mentioned. “O’Connor communicated with others relating to buying unauthorized entry to quite a lot of Twitter accounts, together with accounts related to public figures around the globe.”
The defendant has additionally been accused of orchestrating SIM swapping assaults to grab management of customers’ Snapchat and TikTok accounts, and in a single case, even goal a New York-based cryptocurrency firm to steal crypto price roughly $794,000 on the time.
“After stealing and fraudulently diverting the Stolen Cryptocurrency, O’Connor and his co-conspirators laundered it by means of dozens of transfers and transactions and exchanged a few of it for Bitcoin utilizing cryptocurrency trade providers,” the DoJ mentioned.
“Finally, a portion of the Stolen Cryptocurrency was deposited right into a cryptocurrency trade account managed by O’Connor.”
Additionally within the listing of offenses dedicated by O’Connor is cyberstalking two victims, together with a minor in June and July 2020 by falsely claiming that the person was making threats to shoot folks in an try to incite a regulation enforcement response.
O’Connor, who mentioned his crimes have been “silly and pointless,” in accordance to TechCrunch, additionally faces three years of supervised launch after serving his jail time period. He has additionally been ordered to forfeit $794,000.
