By Jonathan Stempel
NEW YORK, Nov 3 (Reuters) – A U.Okay. man beforehand charged in the USA with involvement within the hacking of politicians’ and celebrities’ Twitter accounts was charged on Wednesday over a separate scheme ensuing within the theft of $784,000 of cryptocurrency.
U.S. prosecutors in Manhattan stated Joseph James O’Connor, 22, and his accomplices stole bitcoin, Ethereum and Litecoin after gaining management of victims’ cellphone numbers by linking them to subscriber identification module playing cards, or SIM playing cards.
O’Connor, also called PlugwalkJoe, and his accomplices performed so-called SIM swap assaults concentrating on three executives of a Manhattan cryptocurrency firm, stole cryptocurrency from two purchasers, and laundered what they stole, prosecutors stated.
A lawyer for O’Connor couldn’t instantly be recognized. Prosecutors stated the scheme ran from March to Might 2019.
O’Connor has been awaiting attainable extradition from Spain following his July 21 arrest https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/uk-citizen-arrested-spain-role-2020-twitter-hack-2021-07-21 regarding a July 2020 hacking that compromised dozens of Twitter accounts and allegedly netted greater than $118,000 of bitcoin.
The accounts included these of present U.S. President Joe Biden, former President Barack Obama, Amazon.com’s Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett, Invoice Gates, Tesla’s Elon Musk, actuality TV star Kim Kardashian and Ye, the rapper as soon as often called Kanye West.
Graham Ivan Clark, the accused teenage mastermind of the Twitter hacking, pleaded responsible https://www.reuters.com/enterprise/media-telecom/florida-teen-pleads-guilty-hacking-twitter-accounts-biden-celebrities-2021-03-17 in March in a Florida state court docket and agreed to serve three years in a juvenile jail.
Wednesday’s costs in opposition to O’Connor embody conspiracies to commit wire fraud and cash laundering, every carrying a most 20-year jail time period, in addition to aggravated identification theft and conspiracy to commit pc hacking. (Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Modifying by David Gregorio)
