British citizen pleads guilty in a cyberattack on Twitter* in July 2020 which affected many accounts of famous personalities and other users of the platform.

Joseph James O’Connor, also known by the pseudonym “PlugwalkJoe”, admitted to “his role in cyberstalking and several computer hacking schemes, including the hacking of Twitter in July 2020,” the US Department of Justice (DoJ) said.

The 23-year-old suspect was extradited from Spain on April 26 after a Spanish national court in February approved a DoJ request to transfer O’Connor to face 14 US criminal charges.

Scale attack was that that O’Connor and his accomplices seized control of 130 Twitter accounts, including those of Barack Obama, Bill Gates and Elon Musk, to commit a cryptocurrency scam that netted them $120,000 in a matter of hours.

The attack was made possible by using social engineering techniques to gain unauthorized access to Twitter tools and then using that entry point to take control of accounts and, in some cases, sell access to other attackers. O’Connor himself allegedly bought unauthorized access to one Twitter account for $10,000.

O’Connor is one of four people accused of carrying out the Twitter hack. Nima Faseli and Graham Ivan Clark were arrested the same month, while O’Connor was detained by Spanish authorities a year later in July 2021.

Another member of the group, Mason Sheppard, was not arrested, although the case against him is still open. Clark received a three-year sentence after he confessed to 30 criminal charges in March 2021.

In addition to the Twitter incident, the defendant is also accused of hacking user accounts. TikTok and Snapchat, as well as online stalking of a minor victim. Hacks included the organization of attacks with the substitution of SIM-cards (SIM Swapping) against two unknown victims for gaining illegal access to their Snapchat and TikTok accounts. In addition, O’Connor also made false calls to the police and reported that someone (the third victim) “threatened to shoot people.”

O’Connor and his associates are also accused of using SIM-swapping techniques to $784,000 in cryptocurrency theft from a New York-based cryptocurrency company in 2019 . According to the Ministry of Justice, O’Connor and his accomplices laundered the stolen cryptocurrency through dozens of transfers and transactions, and exchanged part of it for bitcoins. Ultimately, some of the stolen cryptocurrency was deposited into the account of a cryptocurrency exchange controlled by O’Connor.

O’Connor, who was seized $784,000 in stolen money, faces a maximum sentence of more than 70 years in prison on all charges.

* The social network is prohibited on the territory of the Russian Federation.