British man who hacked Musk and Obama held responsible for Bitcoin fraud and ordered to pay back $5 million

A British man who defrauded people of Bitcoin by hacking the social media profiles of former President Barack Obama, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, and other celebrities and brands has been ordered to repay more than $5 million worth of BTC and other coins at current prices.

Joseph James O’Connor Indicted for role in SIM swap in 2000 The scheme hijacked the social media profiles of dozens of major accounts and subsequently stole $794,000 worth of cryptocurrency at the time.

“Joseph James O’Connor targeted high-profile individuals and used their accounts to defraud them of crypto assets and money,” Adrian Foster, chief prosecutor in the Proceeds of Crime Division, said in a statement.

“We have been able to make the best use of the powers available to us to ensure that people who have not been convicted in the UK do not benefit from their criminal conduct,” he added.

O’Connor will plead guilty in 2023. sentenced to 5 years in prison By a judge in the Southern District of New York. He was then ordered to pay $794,012.64 in forfeiture and is now responsible for a civil recovery order from the Crown Prosecution Service. 4.1 million pounds of Bitcoin is worth about $5.4 million.

According to the CPS, its civil recovery order involves approximately 235 Ethereum, 42 BTC, and 143,000 BUSD, Binance’s currently devalued dollar-backed stablecoin.

Scammers have frequently used hacked social media profiles to trick unsuspecting users into parting with their cryptocurrencies. While O’Connor’s scam encouraged victims to send small amounts of Bitcoin to an address with the promise of a large reward, more popular recent scams have centered around meme coins.

For example, earlier this year, hackers Promoted a fake UFC meme coin After hijacking the Instagram account, $1.4 million in revenue was stolen on the Solana blockchain.

Similarly, Malicious takeover of McDonald’s Instagram Last year, fake Grimace tokens cost hackers $700,000, and many celebrities and other brands had their accounts compromised to run a pump-and-dump meme coin scam.

A mid-year report from blockchain analysis firm Chainalysis shows that: More than $2.1 billion was reportedly stolen from cryptocurrencies By 2025, the number of users due to crime will increase, and an increasing proportion of these will be due to personal wallet compromises.