A British hacker who hijacked celebrity Twitter accounts including Barack Obama, Elon Musk and Kim Kardashian in a Bitcoin scam has been ordered to hand over £4million.
Joseph O’Connor, 26, was jailed for five years in the US over a plot to target the rich, famous and powerful, with his victims including tech billionaires Jeff Bezos, Microsoft founder Bill Gates and Elon Musk.
The hacker from Liverpool and his accomplices tricked staff of Twitter, now called X, into providing their login details so the cyber criminals could get access to Twitter’s administrative tools, allowing them to infiltrate celebrity accounts.
O’Connor then hacked into more than 130 high-profile accounts in 2020, including those belonging to then US presidential candidate Joe Biden, US investor Warren Buffett, Israel’s leader Benjamin Netanyahu and musician Kayne West, as well as major firms like Apple and Uber.
Tweets were sent out by the hackers, appearing to come from famous names, encouraging followers to send $1000 in Bitcoin in an investment scam, promising followers would receive double in return.
An estimated 350 million Twitter users were sent the messages from official accounts of some of the platform’s biggest users.
One of the fake messages from former President Obama’s account suggested he was ‘giving back to my community due to Covid-19’.
Another tweet purportedly from Amazon boss, Jeff Bezos read: ‘I have decided to give back to my community. All Bitcoin sent to my address below will be sent back doubled. I am only doing a maximum of $50,000,000.’
Hacker Joseph O’Connor was arrested in Spain
O’Connor targeted celebrities during the pandemic
The hackers targeted the American film and television actress Bella Thorne, 28, by stealing nude photographs and videos from her mobile phone and Snapchat account which they threatened to post online.
They also accessed computer systems of a Manhattan-based cryptocurrency provider by gaining control of executives’ mobile phones.
O’Connor was captured in Spain and extradited to the US where he was jailed for five years after pleading guilty in June 2023 to conspiracy to commit computer intrusions, conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering in a New York court.
He also admitted making extortive communications, making threatening communications and two charges of stalking in relation to targeting a 16-year-old girl and threatening to kill her family members.
The hacker was ordered by a US Court to forfeit the £604,000 in virtual currency stolen from a New York cryptocurrency company.
O’Connor was also ordered to pay $2,187,716.21 (£1.6million) to the victims of the offences, but the US authorities did not take any steps to enforce the forfeiture order.
In April he was freed from jail and deported from the United States, so the Crown Prosecution Service then went to the High Court in London to force O’Connor to surrender 42 Bitcoin and a stash of cryptocurrency, now valued at around £4.1m.
Since his imprisonment, the value of the stolen cryptocurrency which remains in secure accounts, had increased to more than £3million by April last year and last week reached £4,135,949.
Fake messages were sent from Bill Gates’ Twitter account, telling his followers to take part in the Bitcoin scam
O’Connor also hacked former US President Barack Obama’s account to send phoney messages
Elon Musk was also targeted in the scam two years before he bought Twitter and renamed the platform
Bitcoin is highly volatile but the current price of $73,800 is about ten times its value when the accounts were hacked in 2020.
The stolen cybercurrency had been held in accounts controlled by two unwitting British accomplices, who had agreed to open the accounts for O’Connor, but had no involvement with the fraud.
O’Connor, who now lives in Spain with his mother Sandra, declined to be involved in the court hearing last week.
But his 60-year-old mother appeared via an audio link from Spain to say she did not know that her son’s ‘obsessive’ gaming had led to him joining a community of hackers.
She told the court that while her son made no admissions about how the cybercurrency was obtained, he was ‘quite happy to forfeit all his interest in the assets’.
Prosecutor Gary Pons said that once the cryptocurrency was seized it would be possible to ‘explore’ which nation keeps the cash, with potential compensation for the victims being sorted ‘through diplomatic channels’.
Mrs Justice Hill ordered the seizure of the cryptocurrency under the proceeds of crime law to stop O’Connor hiding and dispersing his assets.
Adrian Foster, Chief Crown Prosecutor for the CPS Proceeds of Crime Division, said: ‘Joseph James O’Connor targeted well known individuals and used their accounts to scam people out of their crypto assets and money.
‘We were able to use the full force of the powers available to us to ensure that even when someone is not convicted in the UK, we are still able to ensure they do not benefit from their criminality.’