A British man has pleaded guilty over his role in schemes to hack the Twitter accounts of celebrities including Joe Biden and Elon Musk, as well as stealing $794,000 in cryptocurrency.
Joseph James O’Connor, 23, entered his guilty plea in a New York court after being extradited from Spain on 26 April.
He was arrested nearly two years ago in Spain for the July 2020 hack of over 130 Twitter accounts, including those of Apple, Uber, Kanye West, Bill Gates, Joe Biden, Barack Obama and Elon Musk, who now owns the social media site.
He and others in his hacking group hijacked the accounts and asked the owners’ followers to send them bitcoin, promising to double their money.
In 2019 the group also used a technique known as sim card swaps to break their way into social media accounts of two media stars, not included in court filings but named in press reports as TikTok star Addison Rae and actor Bella Thorne.
The group threatened to release their private images and other information.
“O’Connor’s criminal activities were flagrant and malicious, and his conduct impacted multiple people’s lives. He harassed, threatened, and extorted his victims, causing substantial emotional harm,” said Kenneth A Polite Jr, an assistant attorney general in the US justice department’s criminal division.
“Like many criminal actors, O’Connor tried to stay anonymous by using a computer to hide behind stealth accounts and aliases from outside the United States.”
It’s also alleged that the group used the same technique to steal $794,000 of virtual currency from a New York cryptocurrency company.
O’Connor, who went by the online name of PlugwalkJoe, pleaded guilty to multiple counts of computer intrusion, extortion, stalking, wire fraud and money laundering.
The most serious of the charges brings up to 20 years in prison. O’Connor is scheduled to be sentenced on 23 June, according to a DOJ press release.
In July 2021, Florida teenager Graham Ivan Clark, the alleged mastermind of the hacking group, was sentenced to three years in juvenile prison under a plea agreement.
Clark, only 17 when he was charged, was sentenced to the maximum allowed under Florida’s Youthful Offender Act.
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