A UK man beforehand charged in the US with involvement within the hacking of politicians’ and celebrities’ Twitter accounts was charged on Wednesday over a separate scheme ensuing within the theft of $784,000 (roughly Rs. 5.82 crore) of cryptocurrency.
US prosecutors in Manhattan mentioned Joseph James O’Connor, 22, and his accomplices stole Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin after gaining management of victims’ cellphone numbers by linking them to subscriber id module playing cards, or SIM playing cards. Bitcoin price in India stood at Rs. 50.18 lakh, Ethereum price stood at Rs. 3.66 lakh, whereas Litecoin price stood at Rs. 16,200 as of November 5 at 11:57am IST.
O’Connor, often known as PlugwalkJoe, and his accomplices performed so-called SIM swap assaults concentrating on three executives of a Manhattan cryptocurrency firm, stole cryptocurrency from two purchasers, and laundered what they stole, prosecutors mentioned.
A lawyer for O’Connor couldn’t instantly be recognized. Prosecutors mentioned the scheme ran from March to Could 2019.
O’Connor has been awaiting potential extradition from Spain following his July 21 arrest regarding a July 2020 hacking that compromised dozens of Twitter accounts and allegedly netted greater than $118,000 (roughly Rs. 87.74 lakh) of Bitcoin.
The accounts included these of present US President Joe Biden, former President Barack Obama, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, Tesla’s Elon Musk, actuality TV star Kim Kardashian and Ye, the rapper as soon as often called Kanye West.
Graham Ivan Clark, the accused teenage mastermind of the Twitter hacking, pleaded guilty in March in a Florida state court docket and agreed to serve three years in a juvenile jail.
Wednesday’s expenses in opposition to O’Connor embrace conspiracies to commit wire fraud and cash laundering, every carrying a most 20-year jail time period, in addition to aggravated id theft and conspiracy to commit laptop hacking.
© Thomson Reuters 2021
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