‘You send $1,000, I send you back $2,000’: Hacker who took over accounts of billionaires and presidents just learned his fate

A hacker from Britain who stole millions by breaking into social media accounts belonging to famous people now has to give back a massive amount of cash after a UK court ruled against him.

According to Unilad, Joseph James O’Connor used the nickname PlugwalkJoe online and helped pull off one of the biggest hacks we’ve seen in years. He worked with other hackers to pretend they were famous people like Elon Musk, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden, then used those accounts to steal money from regular folks who thought they were talking to the real celebrities.

The huge hack went down in 2020 when this group of hackers managed to break into major social media accounts. They acted like they were Kim Kardashian, Bill Gates, and other big names. One of the fake messages posted from Gates’ account said “Everyone is asking me to give back. You send $1,000, I send you back $2,000.” A lot of people actually believed these posts and sent cryptocurrency to the hackers, thinking they’d get twice as much money back.

This guy really thought he could get away with it

O’Connor is 26 now, and police grabbed him in Spain back in 2021. Spain’s top court looked at his case and said most of the people he hurt and most of his crimes happened in America, so they shipped him off to the US. In 2023, he admitted he was guilty of breaking into computer systems, fraud, and blackmail, and a judge gave him five years in prison. The court in New York also told him to pay back $800,000.

A court in the UK just decided that O’Connor needs to hand over £4.1 million, which comes out to roughly $5.4 million, from all the illegal money he made. Police in Britain can now grab his stuff too, which includes 42 bitcoins that are worth about $4 million right now. The case highlights how authorities are going after cybercriminals, just like how political figures face scrutiny over their actions and statements.

A prosecutor from Britain named Adrian Foster said this was a big win. He talked about how O’Connor went after well-known people and used their accounts to rip off regular folks and steal their crypto and cash. Foster also had a warning for other hackers out there, saying that even if someone doesn’t get convicted in the UK, authorities can still make sure they don’t get to keep the money they made from breaking the law.

Police arrested three more people who were involved in taking over these famous social media accounts. The way the hackers got in was pretty simple but clever – they just called up employees who worked at X and told them a fake story that sounded believable enough to get those workers to share their login information.

After that, they managed to get control of some of the company’s main computer systems. They went after 130 different accounts total and actually posted scam messages from 45 of them. The takeover of these important accounts, including those belonging to presidents and other political figures, made a lot of people worried about how safe social media really is.

More than 350 million people saw the fake posts that the hackers put up before the company could take them down. Thousands of regular people got tricked by the scam and ended up losing their hard-earned money.