{"id":25289,"date":"2023-05-10T05:50:43","date_gmt":"2023-05-10T09:50:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/?p=25289"},"modified":"2023-05-10T05:50:43","modified_gmt":"2023-05-10T09:50:43","slug":"briton-pleads-guilty-in-us-to-2020-twitter-hack","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/2023\/05\/10\/briton-pleads-guilty-in-us-to-2020-twitter-hack\/","title":{"rendered":"Briton pleads guilty in US to 2020 Twitter hack"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A British national extradited to the US last month has pleaded guilty in New York to a role in one of the biggest hacks in social media history.<\/b><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The July 2020 Twitter hack affected over 130 accounts including those of Barack Obama and Joe Biden.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Joseph James O’Connor, 23, known as PlugwalkJoe, pleaded guilty to hacking charges carrying a total maximum sentence of over 70 years in prison.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The hacking was part of a large-scale Bitcoin scam.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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O’Connor, who was extradited from Spain, hijacked numerous Twitter accounts and sent out tweets asking followers to send Bitcoin to an account, promising to double their money.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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O’Connor, from Liverpool, was charged alongside three other men over the scam.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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US teenager\u00a0Graham Ivan Clark pleaded guilty<\/a>\u00a0in 2021. Nima Fazeli of Orlando, Florida, and Mason Sheppard, of Bognor Regis in the UK, were charged with federal crimes.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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US Assistant Attorney-General Kenneth Polite Jr described in a\u00a0statement<\/a>\u00a0O’Connor’s actions as “flagrant and malicious”, saying he had “harassed, threatened and extorted his victims, causing substantial emotional harm”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\"Tweets\"<\/picture><\/span><\/div>
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Celebrities including US boxer Floyd Mayweather and the singer Wiz Khalifa also lost control of their accounts<\/div>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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“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.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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“But this plea shows that our investigators and prosecutors will identify, locate, and bring to justice such criminals to ensure they face the consequences for their crimes.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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In 2020, an estimated 350 million Twitter users saw suspicious tweets from official accounts of the platform’s biggest users. Thousands fell for a scam, trusting that a crypto giveaway was real.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Cyber experts agreed that the consequences of the Twitter hack could have been far worse if O’Connor and other hackers had more sophisticated plans than a get-rich-quick scheme.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Disinformation could have been spread to affect political discourse and markets could have been moved by well-worded fake business announcements, for example.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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