Cryptocurrency Fraudster Who Hacked Twitter Accounts Receives Five-Year Jail Term
Joseph James O’Conner, also known as PlugwalkJoe online, has been sentenced to five years in prison by a federal court for his involvement in the 2020 Twitter hack. O’Conner pleaded guilty to several cyber crimes, including a SIM-swapping attack on a TikTok account with millions of followers. Along with his co-perpetrators, O’Conner gained access to Twitter’s backend and hacked the accounts of high-profile users such as Elon Musk, Bill Gates, and Barack Obama. The crypto scam that followed earned O’Conner $794,000.
“After stealing and fraudulently diverting the stolen cryptocurrency, O’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, some of the stolen cryptocurrency was deposited into a cryptocurrency exchange account controlled by O’Connor.” In 2021, Graham Ivan Clark, the alleged teenage perpetrator behind the offence, pleaded guilty in exchange for a three-year prison sentence. In addition to his five-year sentence, O’Conner also faces three years of supervised release following his prison sentence. He must also hand over the $794,000 he defrauded during the hack.
