A New York federal court has sentenced a UK citizen to five years behind bars for his involvement in a 2020 social media hack that included hijacking the Twitter accounts of top US political and business leaders, as well as for cyberstalking and threatening several individuals.
The US Justice Department, in turn, said in a statement that "After stealing and fraudulently diverting the stolen cryptocurrency,” 24-year-old Joseph James O’Connor and “his co-conspirators laundered it through dozens of transfers and transactions and exchanged some of it for Bitcoin using cryptocurrency exchange services.”
According to the statement, "Ultimately, a portion of the stolen cryptocurrency was deposited into a cryptocurrency exchange account controlled by O'Connor."
The 24-year-old, known online as PlugwalkJoe, told US District Judge Jed Rakoff during his sentencing hearing in Manhattan on Friday that he was “ashamed to be here.”
"I’m sorry to all the victims of my crimes. I’m here because I did stupid and shameful things. I will never break the law again. I want to live a life with meaning, not the idiotic, empty, hermit life I was living," O'Connor added.
O'Connor also pleaded guilty to stealing as much as $794,000 in virtual currency from a New York cryptocurrency company.
Kenneth A. Polite Jr, an assistant attorney general in the US justice department’s criminal division, said at the time that "O’Connor’s criminal activities were flagrant and malicious and his conduct impacted multiple people’s lives. He harassed, threatened and extorted his victims, causing substantial emotional harm." The assistant attorney general added that "Like many criminal actors, O’Connor tried to stay anonymous by using a computer to hide behind stealth accounts and aliases from outside the United States." The 24-year-old was extradited from Spain at the request of US prosecutors in April and has since then remained in custody.
The July 2020 intrusion prodded Twitter to take the unprecedented measure of stopping all verified accounts from posting to the site as the company grappled with what was reported as "one of the most visible hacks in recent history."