Eric Council Jr. was sentenced to 14 months in prison for his role in the hack of January 9, 2024 of the X account of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SECs). The convicted person, together with fellow samplers, posted false news about the SEC that approved the first Bitcoin (BTC) Exchange-treated Fund in the US
In a press release on May 16, 2025, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) stated that Council Jr. It will also be subject to three years of accompanying release, a form of conditional release.
The 26-year-old from Huntsville, Alabama, had guilty in February for conspiracy to commit aggravated identity theft and access design fraud. He was arrested in October last year by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents.
What advice Jr. held
On August 29, 2023, the District of Columbia Court of Appeals in Washington ruled that the SEC was wrong to reject Grayscale’s Spot BTC ETF application without the correct cause. The court’s decision meant that the SEC would revise the application from Grayscale, which had rejected it several times.
The profit of the court increased optimism and the crypto industry very much in the SEC to approve Bitcoin ETF every day. Council Jr. And his henchmen benefited from the market sentiment and announced a fake inspection of the real X account of the sec.
Judicial documents indicate that the Council Jr. Teaching to hack the official account of the SEC and to post fake news about approval from Spot BTC ETF to manipulate the price of BTC. His role was to perform a subscriber identity module (SIM) Swap, in which a bad actor convinces the mobile carrier of porting the telephone number of a victim to a SIM card that is controlled by them.
According to the Doj used Council Jr. An ID card printer to produce fake IDs of victims, whose personal information was provided to him by fellow-samenwiers. He then used the fake IDs to access the victim’s number to get access to the X account of the SEC and the fake news. Council Jr. received payment in BTC for his role in the X -Accounthack of the SEC.
The Damage Council Jr. has contributed to
Immediately after placing the fake news, the price of each BTC increased by more than $ 1,000. But after the SEC chairman, Gary Gensler, the hack acknowledged and rejected the message from hackers such as fake, the BTC price crashed by more than $ 2,000 per BTC, CryptoSlate Data shows.
BTC price rose to $ 48,000 after the fake news was posted, but set to $ 45,000 after the refutation of Gensler. About $ 50 billion was wiped out in the Bitcoin fake news in the 24 -hour installation. The price fluctuation also caused a total of $ 220 million in liquidations.
FBI Criminal Investigative Division Acting Assistant Director Darren Cox called Hack “called a calculated criminal law intended to mislead the public and to manipulate the financial markets.” He added:
“By spreading false information to influence the markets, [Jr.] tried to run the public trust and exploit the financial system. “
