A 22-year-old British citizen was arrested in Spain on Wednesday in reference to a July 2020 Twitter hack which compromised the accounts of high-profile politicians and celebrities, the US Justice Department stated on Wednesday.

It named the British man as Joseph James O’Connor and stated he confronted a number of expenses. He was additionally accused in a legal grievance of pc intrusions associated to takeovers of TikTok and Snapchat accounts, together with one incident involving sextortion, in addition to cyberstalking a 16-year-old juvenile.

An unnamed second individual, recognized solely as “Juvenile 1” within the legal grievance, was additionally charged in reference to the hack on July 30, 2020, within the Northern District of California for taking part in a “central role” within the Twitter assault and used the moniker Kirk#5270.

The teen was later recognized as Graham Ivan Clark, 18. The federal expenses have been dismissed and in March, he pleaded responsible to state expenses in Florida and agreed to serve three years in juvenile jail.

The July 2020 Twitter assault hijacked a wide range of verified Twitter accounts, together with then-Democratic candidate Joe Biden and Tesla CEO Elon Musk. The accounts of former President Barack Obama, TV actuality star Kim Kardashian, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Benjamin Netanyahu, Jeff Bezos, Michael Bloomberg, and Kanye West have been additionally hit.

The alleged hacker used the accounts to solicit digital forex, prompting Twitter to take the extraordinary step of stopping some verified accounts from publishing messages for a number of hours till safety to the accounts may very well be restored.

According to the legal grievance, the accounts of cryptocurrency exchanges akin to Binance, Gemini, and Coinbase amongst others have been additionally compromised, in addition to these of firms together with Apple and Uber.

The messages directed folks to ship cryptocurrency to varied accounts, and obtained about $117,000 (roughly Rs. 87 lakhs) via 415 transfers, the grievance stated. Two different Bitcoin addresses that have been posted, in the meantime, additionally collected an extra $6,700 (roughly Rs. 4.9 lakhs) via 100 transactions. Bitcoin worth in India stood at Rs. 23.8 lakhs as of 11am IST on jUly 22.

Authorities allege that Juvenile 1 reached out to a number of different folks and claimed he might “reset, swap and control any Twitter account at will, and would do so in exchange for Bitcoin transfers.”

Two of these folks whom Juvenile 1 recruited, Nima Fazeli and Mason Sheppard, agreed to function middlemen to assist discover patrons for Twitter usernames in trade for a charge, investigators say.

Both Fazeli and Sheppard have been criminally charged within the case on July 30, 2020, the grievance says.

O’Connor’s function within the assault got here to mild after the FBI interviewed one other unnamed juvenile, known as Juvenile 2, who recognized O’Connor and stated O’Connor had communicated about having access to sure Twitter accounts, together with presumably that of former President Donald Trump.

Criminal investigators in California began receiving recommendations on O’Connor, who makes use of the net moniker PlugwalkJoe, way back to 2018, the grievance says. Witnesses who had heard what O’Connor’s voice gave the impression of on varied Google voice calls have been in a position to assist legislation enforcement establish him.

A Justice Department spokesman stated O’Connor is anticipated to have a detention listening to in Spain on Thursday.

© Thomson Reuters 2021