A British citizen on Tuesday pleaded guilty to cyber crime offenses in New York over his involvement in one of the largest social media hacks in history and other schemes. Joseph James O’Connor, 23, admitted being part of a hacking operation in July 2020 which saw over 130 Twitter accounts compromised—including those belonging to celebrities like Joe Biden, Elon Musk, and Kanye West. O’Connor, who used the alias PlugwalkJoe, now faces a maximum sentence of 70 years in prison for his offenses, which also included stealing $794,000 from a New York cryptocurrency company. In the Twitter hack, hijacked celebrity accounts asked their followers to send Bitcoin payments which would then be paid back in double. A U.S. teenager, Graham Ivan Clark, pleaded guilty in 2021 for his involvement.
