Federal prosecutors are reportedly planning to propose a plea deal to the man who allegedly hacked the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) social media platform X account earlier this year.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) says 25-year-old Alabama native Eric Council Jr. allegedly conspired with others to take unauthorized control of the SEC’s X Account and prematurely announced the approval of spot Bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded funds (ETF) in the United States. US.
During a hearing on Friday, he pleaded not guilty to conspiracy to commit aggravated identity theft and access device fraud, but federal prosecutors also told the judge they planned to offer a plea deal to the council, which could see cooperation against his unnamed co-conspirators who are said to be the masterminds behind the scenes, Bloomberg reports.
The fake ETF announcement, posted in January, caused Bitcoin’s price to rise by more than $1,000 and then fall by more than $2,000 after the SEC regained control of his X account and declared the statement unauthorized and was the result of a security breach. . The regulator rightly gave the green light for Bitcoin ETFs shortly after the security incident.
The DOJ alleges that the Council carried out the hack through an unauthorized SIM swap, which fraudulently persuades a cell phone company to assign someone else’s contact number to a SIM card controlled by a bad actor. The Alabama man allegedly used the stolen identity of a person who had access to the SEC’s X account.
After the hack, secure.
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