UK prosecutors seize £4.11M in crypto from Twitter mega-hack culprit

British prosecutors have secured a civil recovery order to seize crypto assets worth £4.11 million ($5.39 million) from Twitter hacker Joseph James O'Connor, clawing back the proceeds of a scam that used hijacked celebrity accounts to solicit digital currency and threaten high-profile individuals.

O'Connor, now 26, is already serving a five-year sentence in the US after pleading guilty in 2023 to conspiracy to commit computer intrusions, wire fraud, and money laundering for his role in the July 2020 breach that compromised accounts belonging to the likes of Barack Obama, Bill Gates, and Jeff Bezos.

The group behind the intrusion used SIM-swapping and social engineering techniques to access internal Twitter tools, then pushed bogus messages urging followers to send Bitcoin to attacker-controlled wallets – a ruse that netted more than $100,000 in a matter of hours.

The British Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said on Monday that its ...