A British man who took part in schemes to hack the Twitter accounts of celebrities, including Joe Biden and Elon Musk, was sentenced to five years in prison, the US attorney’s office announced on Friday.
Joseph James O’Connor, 24, pleaded guilty to cybercrime charges last month, nearly three years after he and others in his hacking group hijacked more than 130 Twitter accounts as part of a Bitcoin scam, including those of Apple, Uber, Kanye West, Bill Gates and Barack Obama. He also pleaded guilty to stealing $794,000 in virtual currency from a New York cryptocurrency company.
O’Connor was arrested nearly two years ago in Spain for the July 2020 hack and extradited to the US in April. The charges he pleaded guilty to include conspiracy to commit computer intrusions, conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering and stalking two victims, among others. Under the most serious of the charges, O’Connor faced up to 20 years in prison.
In addition to serving five years in a US prison, O’Connor was also sentenced to three years of supervised release and ordered to pay $794,000.
“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,” Kenneth A Polite Jr, an assistant attorney general in the US justice department’s criminal division, said after O’Connor pleaded guilty last month.
“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.”
Two others have also been charged with federal crimes in the incident, including Nima Fazeli of Florida, and Mason Sheppard, who is from Bognor Regis in the UK.
The alleged mastermind of the hacking group, the Florida teen Graham Ivan Clark, was sentenced to three years in juvenile prison in July 2021, the maximum allowed under state law.
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The attacks, which unfolded over the course of several hours in July 2020, rocked Twitter and prompted the company to take the unprecedented measure of stopping all verified accounts from tweeting.