A UK citizen extradited to the US last month has admitted his involvement in variety of cyber crimes, including the 2020 Twitter hack, one of the biggest hacks in social media history that compromised numerous accounts of celebrities and politicians, including former US President Barack Obama and Microsoft’s Bill Gates.
Joseph James O'Connor, 23, known as PlugwalkJoe, was extradited to the US from Spain on April 26, 2023. He is accused of hacking 130 Twitter accounts, as well as compromising the Snapchat account of an unidentified public figure whom he allegedly tried to extort with the threat of publishing nude photographs of the person.
In 2020, O'Connor and unnamed co-conspirators gained access to Twitter’s administrative tools and hijacked several accounts belonging to major companies and celebrities. They then used the compromised accounts to promote a Bitcoin scam that raked in almost $120,000.
According to court documents, between March and May 2019 PlugwalkJoe together with his partners in crime allegedly carried out a SIM swapping scheme to gain access to three executives working at a cryptocurrency exchange. They gained unauthorized access to multiple company’s accounts and computer systems and stole approximately $784,000 in cryptocurrency.
Joseph James O'Connor was charged alongside three other men over the Twitter scam. US teenager Graham Ivan Clark, who is said to be the “mastermind” behind the hack, pleaded guilty in 2021. Two other defendants - Nima Fazeli (aka Rolex) of Orlando, Florida, and Mason Sheppard (aka Chaewon), of Bognor Regis in the UK - were charged with federal crimes.
O'Connor pleaded guilty on May 9, 2023 in New York to hacking charges, including conspiracy to commit computer intrusion and two counts of committing computer intrusions, stalking, conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering. He faces a total maximum sentence of over 70 years in prison.
