A British man who hacked the X accounts of celebrities in a bid to con folks out of Bitcoin, has been ordered to repay £4.1m-worth of the cryptocurrency, prosecutors say.
Joseph James O’Connor, 26, was jailed in america for 5 years in 2023 after he pleaded guilty to expenses together with laptop intrusion, wire fraud and extortion.
He was arrested in Spain in 2021 and extradited after the nation’s excessive courtroom dominated the US was finest positioned to prosecute as a result of the proof and victims have been there.
The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) mentioned on Monday it had obtained a civil restoration order to grab 42 Bitcoin and different crypto property linked to the rip-off, through which O’Connor used hijacked accounts to solicit digital forex and threaten celebrities.
The July 2020 hack compromised accounts of high-profile figures together with former US presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
O’Connor and his co-conspirators stole greater than $794,000 (£629,000) of cryptocurrency after utilizing the hacked accounts to ask folks to ship $1,000 in Bitcoin to obtain double again.
Prosecutor Adrian Foster mentioned the civil restoration order confirmed that “even when somebody just isn’t convicted within the UK, we’re nonetheless ready to make sure they don’t profit from their criminality”.
The order, which valued O’Connor’s property at round £4.1m, was made final week, following a freeze positioned on the hacker’s property, which prosecutors secured throughout extradition proceedings.
Barack Obama was one of many well-known folks to have their Twitter account hacked
Elon Musk was amongst these focused by scammers in a Twitter hack
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A court-appointed trustee will liquidate his property, the CPS mentioned.
The assault additionally compromised the X (then Twitter) accounts of different high-profile figures together with Tesla chief government Elon Musk, investor Warren Buffett, and media character and businesswoman Kim Kardashian.
The hack prompted the social media platform to briefly freeze some accounts.
X mentioned 130 accounts have been focused, with 45 used to ship tweets.
