Hacker Behind Musk and Obama Bitcoin Scam Hit With $5M Repayment Bill

2020 Twitter hack mastermind Joseph James O’Connor has been officially ordered to surrender more than $5 million in cryptocurrency after the value of his stolen digital assets appreciated during his time in prison. In 2020, O’Connor was involved in a hack that reportedly took control over 130 high-profile accounts, including those of Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Jeff Bezos, Kim Kardashian, and Elon Musk, and used them to deceive followers, urging them to send cryptocurrency with a fake promise of receiving double the amount in return. The British hacker pleaded guilty in 2023 and was sentenced to five years. Currently, he is serving his sentence in the United States for offenses like computer intrusion, wire fraud, and money laundering. Prosecutors involved in this case confirmed that the group responsible for orchestrating the hack had collected more than $794,000. O’Connor currently lives in Spain and didn’t attend the hearing in London, but his mother attended on his behalf and confirmed that he was willing to forfeit the mining interest in cryptos.   

The assets the group amassed underwent price appreciation and are now worth way more than they were in 2020. The UK prosecutors seized the assets this week, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, and stablecoins, after his incarceration. The UK’s Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has officially confirmed that it has secured a civil recovery order targeting 42.378 BTC, 235.329 ETH, 143,273.57 BUSD, and 15.23 USDC connected to Joseph James O’Connor’s scam, and the seized assets are now worth around $5.41 million. The experts claim that the assets were once worth only a fraction of that amount at the time of the hack, and the officials confirmed that the funds will be liquidated by a trustee appointed by the honourable court.  

Joseph James O’Connor, The British Hacker in the Infamous 2020 Twitter Hack

Joseph James O’Connor was arrested in Spain and extradited after Spain’s High Court ruled the United States was ideal to prosecute since the evidence and victims were there. He was involved in crimes like computer intrusion conspiracies, wire fraud, money laundering activities, extortion, threatening communications, and stalking a 16-year-old victim. Stalking was one of the serious convictions that fell on him, and Judge Jed Rakoff commented during the sentencing in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York in 2023 that cryptocurrency crimes were too easily dismissed as only money, but lives had been impacted. He noted that in the California crimes, the individual had ruined the lives of other young people.  

The hack in 2020 began by hijacking the industry-specific accounts, like CoinDesk, Coinbase, and Binance. After that, he moved on to the mainstream figures like Elon Musk and Obama, urging their followers to send him cryptocurrencies. He also used accounts of prominent figures like Warren Buffett, Joe Biden, and Kim Kardashian, along with the billionaire companies such as Uber, Apple, and Cash App. He pleaded guilty to a separate SIM-swapping scheme for extracting funds from numerous top executives in crypto and bagging a total of $784,000 worth of digital assets. Olga Zverovich, the Assistant United States Attorney at that time, commented that, from overseas, he had targeted people in the US and that those were not childish crimes. She added that he had used mixers and tumblers.       

The CPS has already initiated a Property Freezing Order during his extradition proceedings to prevent the cryptocurrency from being moved to a different account. Adrian Foster, Chief Crown Prosecutor for the CPS Proceeds of Crime Division, has confirmed that the authorities have the power and will pursue the criminal profits even if the convictions occur overseas. He commented that they had been able to use the full force of the powers available to them to ensure that even when someone was not convicted in the UK, they were still able to ensure that he or she did not benefit from their criminality.    

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