{"id":30013,"date":"2025-11-17T10:39:45","date_gmt":"2025-11-17T15:39:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/?p=30013"},"modified":"2025-11-17T10:39:45","modified_gmt":"2025-11-17T15:39:45","slug":"joseph-james-oconnor-ordered-to-pay-back-over-4m-in-bitcoin-after-hacking-celebrity-x-accounts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/2025\/11\/17\/joseph-james-oconnor-ordered-to-pay-back-over-4m-in-bitcoin-after-hacking-celebrity-x-accounts\/","title":{"rendered":"Joseph James O’Connor ordered to pay back over \u00a34m in Bitcoin after hacking celebrity X accounts"},"content":{"rendered":"

A British man who hacked the X accounts of celebrities in a bid to con people out of Bitcoin, has been ordered to repay \u00a34.1m-worth of the cryptocurrency, prosecutors say.<\/p>\n

Joseph James O’Connor, 26, was jailed in the United States for five years in 2023 after he\u00a0pleaded guilty<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0to charges including computer intrusion, wire fraud and extortion.<\/p>\n

He was arrested in Spain in 2021 and extradited after the country’s high court ruled the US was best placed to prosecute because the evidence and victims were there.<\/p>\n

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said on Monday it had obtained a civil recovery order to seize 42\u00a0Bitcoin<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0and other crypto assets linked to the scam, in which O’Connor used hijacked accounts to solicit digital currency and threaten celebrities.<\/p>\n

The July 2020 hack compromised accounts of high-profile figures including former US presidents\u00a0Barack Obama<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Joe Biden<\/strong><\/a>, and Amazon founder\u00a0Jeff Bezos<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n

O’Connor and his co-conspirators stole more than $794,000 (\u00a3629,000) of cryptocurrency after using the hacked accounts to ask people to send $1,000 in Bitcoin to receive double back.<\/p>\n

Prosecutor Adrian Foster said the civil recovery order showed that “even when someone is not convicted in the UK, we are still able to ensure they do not benefit from their criminality”.<\/p>\n

The order, which valued O’Connor’s assets at around \u00a34.1m, was made last week, following a freeze placed on the hacker’s property, which prosecutors secured during extradition proceedings.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\"Barack<\/div>
Barack Obama was one of the famous people to have their Twitter account hacked<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\n
\"Elon<\/div>
Elon Musk was among those targeted by scammers in a Twitter hack<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

A court-appointed trustee will liquidate his assets, the CPS said.<\/p>\n

The attack also compromised the\u00a0X (then Twitter)<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0accounts of other high-profile figures including Tesla chief executive\u00a0Elon Musk<\/strong><\/a>, investor Warren Buffett, and media personality and businesswoman\u00a0Kim Kardashian<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n

The hack prompted the social media platform to temporarily freeze some accounts.<\/p>\n

X said 130 accounts were targeted, with 45 used to send tweets.<\/p>\n

Source: \u00a0\"Sky<\/a> news.sky.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A British man who hacked the X accounts of celebrities in a bid to con people out of Bitcoin, has been ordered to repay \u00a34.1m-worth of the cryptocurrency, prosecutors say. Joseph James O’Connor, 26, was […]<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30014,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,4,3],"tags":[4510,11828,11827,1746,8374,4686,952,1109,2936,933,803],"class_list":{"0":"post-30013","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"category-uk","9":"category-usa","10":"tag-bitcoin","11":"tag-civil-recovery-order","12":"tag-computer-intrusion","13":"tag-crown-prosecution-service","14":"tag-crypto-assets","15":"tag-cryptocurrency","16":"tag-extortion","17":"tag-extradited","18":"tag-hacking","19":"tag-spain","20":"tag-wire-fraud","21":"pmpro-has-access"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30013","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30013"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30013\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30015,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30013\/revisions\/30015"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30014"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}