A British citizen was recently sentenced to five years in prison in the US for committing a slew of cyber crimes, including stealing $794,000 in digital assets from a Manhattan-based crypto company at the time.
Joseph James O’Connor, aka “PlugwalkJoe,” was extradited from Spain in late April and pleaded guilty to multiple charges in May.
In addition to the prison sentence, a federal judge also sentenced O’Connor to three years’ supervised release and ordered him to forfeit $794,012.
O’Connor and his co-conspirators carried out a SIM-swap attack by targeting the executives of the unnamed Manhattan crypto company. The hackers then laundered the stolen proceeds, some of which were eventually deposited into a crypto exchange account controlled by O’Connor.
The British citizen is also involved in the high-profile Twitter hack that took over the accounts of Joe Biden, Elon Musk and other well-known personalities to promote a Bitcoin (BTC) giveaway scam. The perpetrators profited 11.3 BTC, currently worth about $344,152, from the scheme.
In addition, O’Connor also stalked and threatened a victim under the age of 18, according to the US law firm. In what’s known as a “swatting attack,” the culprit reportedly called local police and falsely claimed that the person he was stalking had made threats to shoot people, giving what he believed was their address. O’Connor also called and threatened to kill several members of the victim’s family.
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