Joseph James O’Connor, one of the prime suspects of the infamous Twitter hack last year, has been charged with yet another fraudulent charge of $784,000 worth of crypto via SIM swapping scam.
According to a Reuters report published on November 5, the United States prosecutor in Manhattan has tabled new charges against the 22-year-old O’Connor alongside other anonymous suspects, who ran a fraudulent scheme from March 2019.
The prosecutor has alleged that the accused and other gangs conducted a SIM swap to three cryptocurrency company executives, stealing roughly $700,000 in Bitcoin, Ether, and Litecoin.
O’Connor and his on-run gangs now face charges, including theft, conspiracies to commit money laundering, wire fraud, and computer hacking.
Upon successful conviction, the accused could spend up to 20-year in jail.
O’Connor’s Affiliation With Twitter Scam
After a long run, the prime suspect was successfully arrested in July this year for involvement in the infamous 2021 Twitter hack that massively affected top politicians and celebrities’ Twitter account in 2019.
Among the top prominent personalities whose accounts got compromised included U.S President Joe Biden, former President Barack Obama, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos.
The infamous scam also intensively affected some popular crypto entities, including Binance, Bitfinex, Coinbase, Changpeng Zhao, Crypto Engine and Justin Sun.
The 22-year suspect going by the name PlugwalkJoe and his syndicate garnered over $118,000 worth of Bitcoin from innocent victims by tweeting about fake giveaways.
Although O’Connor is still detained in Spain awaiting his charges in the United States, his affiliate and teenage mastermind of the hack, Graham Ivan Clark, was arraigned in a Florida Court and pleaded guilty in March 2021. Clark is now serving his three-year jail term in Juvenile prison after an agreement with authorities.
SIM Swap Explained
By description, SIM Swapping is a process of transferring a victim’s phone details to another device intending to access all associated accounts.
As the entire world continues embracing digital technologies, the number of swap hacks has also increased. Many perpetrators have been taking advantage of the digital evolution to cart away millions of dollars online.
One of the largest SIM swapping scams in the history of crypto happened last year, where an anonymous hacker stole roughly $45 million in BTC and Bitcoin Cash from a whale investor.
