Hacker Plugwalkjoe who targeted President Obama, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk social media accounts sentenced to prison

SAN FRANCISCO -- A man from the United Kingdom was sentenced Friday in San Francisco to five years in federal prison for his role in a massive array of cybercrimes involving social media, the U.S. Department of Justice said.

Joseph O'Connor, 24, also known as Plugwalkjoe, was extradited from Spain in April and pleaded guilty in May to charges filed in California and New York involving a hack of Twitter, takeovers of user accounts on Snapchat and TikTok, and cyberstalking two people. He also stole cryptocurrency and laundered the proceeds, prosecutors said.

In his California case, O'Connor gained unauthorized access to social media accounts maintained by Twitter in July 2020. O'Connor and his co-conspirators also gained access to administrative tools used by Twitter to maintain its operations, prosecutors said. In doing so, O'Connor was able to transfer the rightful ownership of Twitter accounts to other unauthorized users. In some cases, these unauthorized accounts were used to defraud other Twitter users by attempting to sell cryptocurrency.

O'Connor's hacking affected such accounts as those of Barack Obama, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Apple.

In August 2020, O'Connor fraudulently accessed the account of one of the "most highly visible" TikTok accounts, which was associated with an "influencer" with millions of followers, prosecutors said.

O'Connor and his associates got access to the account of "Victim-1" via a SIM swap and used their unauthorized access to post self-promotional messages. O'Connor also threatened to release personal, sensitive material related to Victim-1 to people who joined a specific Discord server.

In June 2019, O'Connor and his co-conspirators hacked the Snapchat account of another public figure -- identified by prosecutors as "Victim 2" -- and then threatened to publicly release stolen, sensitive materials unless Victim-2 agreed to publicly post messages related to O'Connor's online persona, among other things, prosecutors said.

O'Connor also cyberstalked a minor, known as "Victim-3," in June and July 2020. O'Connor "swatted" this user by contacting law enforcement and falsely saying that Victim-3 was making threats to shoot people. O'Connor also called later that day and told police he was planning to kill people at Victim-3's address. This resulted in multiple law enforcement agencies descending on the address in reference to an armed and dangerous person.

O'Connor also swatted a high school, a restaurant and a sheriff's department in the same area. In those messages, he either represented himself as Victim-3 or a resident at what he believed was Victim-3's house. The next month, O'Connor called multiple family members of Victim-3 and threatened to kill them.

O'Connor pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit computer intrusion, committing computer intrusion, making extortive communications, two counts of stalking and making threatening communications.

In his New York case, O'Connor pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit computer intrusions, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and conspiracy to commit money laundering.

In addition to five years in prison, O'Connor must pay nearly $800,000 in forfeiture.