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Individual Linked to Notorious 2020 Twitter Breach Receives Five-Year Prison Sentence for Cryptocurrency Theft
Joseph James O’Connor, a citizen of the U.K. and one of the individuals involved in the 2020 Twitter breach, has been sentenced to five years in prison for his involvement in various cybercrime activities.
As stated in a press release from the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, Judge Jed S. Rakoff sentenced O’Connor for two categories of offenses: conspiracy to engage in computer hacking and the theft of cryptocurrencies through a SIM swap attack; his participation in the 2020 Twitter breach, cyberstalking two distinct victims, and computer intrusions related to the takeover of TikTok and Snapchat accounts.
O’Connor Receives Five-Year Prison Sentence
The 24-year-old defendant was extradited from Spain on April 26, 2023, and he entered a guilty plea to the charges against him on May 9, 2023. He faced a potential sentence of 20 years or more.
Among his crimes, O’Connor executed a SIM swap attack to steal bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), and Litecoin (LTC) valued at $794,000 at the time from three executives of a cryptocurrency firm located in Manhattan. This fraudulent operation occurred from March to May 2019. The stolen assets are now valued at over $1.6 million, and O’Connor, along with his co-conspirators, laundered them through various cryptocurrency exchange accounts.
Additionally, O’Connor was involved in a series of offenses related to the exploitation of TikTok and Snapchat accounts, online extortion, and cyberstalking between 2019 and 2020. On one occasion, O’Connor and his associates gained unauthorized access to a public figure’s TikTok account, which had millions of followers, and posted self-promotional content, threatening to disclose sensitive information to a specified group of individuals.
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O’Connor’s Involvement in the 2020 Twitter Breach
Moreover, O’Connor was part of a significant 2020 Twitter breach that compromised the accounts of prominent politicians and celebrities. Some of the victims included U.S. President Joe Biden, former President Barack Obama, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos.
The Twitter accounts of major cryptocurrency firms and figures such as Binance, Bitfinex, Coinbase, Changpeng Zhao, and Justin Sun were also impacted. O’Connor and his associates managed to accumulate over $118,000 in cryptocurrency through tweets promoting fake giveaways.
In addition to O’Connor’s prison sentence, he received three years of supervised release and was ordered to forfeit $794,000.
Meanwhile, O’Connor’s accomplice and the teenage mastermind behind the Twitter breach, Graham Ivan Clark, is currently serving a three-year sentence in a juvenile facility after pleading guilty in March 2021.
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