A United Kingdom court has ordered Joseph James O'Connor to surrender £4.1 million (approximately $5.4 million) in Bitcoin, directly linked to the massive Twitter account hack in July 2020. The Crown Prosecution Service secured a civil recovery order, leading to the confiscation of 42 Bitcoins and other digital assets. O'Connor, now 26, is currently serving a five-year prison sentence in the United States after pleading guilty to charges including wire fraud, unauthorized computer access, extortion, and cyberstalking.
The July 2020 hack compromised over 130 high-profile Twitter accounts, including those of Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, and Kim Kardashian. Attackers posted messages urging users to send Bitcoin to a specific address with promises to double the amounts, generating over $100,000 in minutes. Twitter (now X) temporarily locked verified accounts to contain the damage, highlighting critical security vulnerabilities.
O'Connor was arrested in Spain in 2021 and extradited to the U.S., where he faced additional charges for hijacking TikTok and Snapchat accounts and cyberstalking a juvenile. A court-appointed trustee will manage the sale of the seized assets, which remain frozen during extradition. This decision comes amid a 10% drop in Bitcoin's price over the past week, with BTC trading around $94,253 and a 52% surge in 24-hour trading volume to $72 billion at press time.
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