Joseph James O’Connor, a British hacker known as PlugwalkJoe, has been ordered to repay over £4 million in cryptocurrency. O’Connor was sentenced to five years in prison in the United States in 2023 after pleading guilty to hacking over 100 Twitter (now X) accounts and engaging in cyberstalking.
The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) stated that O’Connor, from Liverpool, used the compromised accounts of high-profile individuals, including Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Kim Kardashian, and Elon Musk, to perpetrate cryptocurrency and cash scams. He also threatened celebrities with the exposure of their private information.
The CPS has successfully obtained a civil recovery order to seize 42 Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies obtained by O’Connor through his criminal activities, valued at approximately £4.1 million. This action demonstrates the CPS's commitment to preventing criminals from profiting from their illicit gains, even if they are not convicted in the UK.
One of O’Connor's schemes involved SIM swapping, where he and his accomplices gained control of a victim's phone number to steal approximately $794,000 (£603,000) from a Manhattan cryptocurrency company. The stolen funds were subsequently laundered through multiple transactions, with some ending up in an account controlled by O’Connor.
He was also involved in a major Twitter hack in July 2020, where attackers used social engineering to access internal tools and take over celebrity accounts, which were then used for cryptocurrency scams or sold to others. O'Connor communicated with accomplices regarding the purchase of high-profile accounts, agreeing to pay significant sums for them.
