A federal court sentenced Joseph James O’Conner to five years in prison on Friday for his role in the 2020 Twitter hack.
Last month, the 24-year-old, known online as PlugwalkJoe, pleaded guilty to a slew of cybercrimes, including a SIM-swapping attack on a TikTok account with millions of followers.
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O’Conner and his co-perpetrators gained access to the company’s backend and, as a result, the accounts of Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Barack Obama, and more than 100 other high-profile users during the 2020 Twitter breach.
In the ensuing crypto fraud, O’Conner made $794,000.
“After stealing and fraudulently diverting the stolen cryptocurrency, 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,” the Justice Department said.
“Ultimately, a portion of the stolen cryptocurrency was deposited into a cryptocurrency exchange account controlled by O’Connor.”
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Graham Ivan Clark, the suspected adolescent mastermind behind the breach, pleaded guilty and received a three-year prison sentence in 2021.
O’Conner faces three years of supervised release after his jail term, in addition to his five-year sentence. He must also return the $794,000 he stole during the breach.
