Home / Technology
Jailed hacker who hijacked Apple, Gates, and Obama’s X accounts ordered to repay $5.4m
Brit responsible for breaching Apple, Bill Gates, and Obama’s X accounts has been ordered to repay millions
The Brit responsible for breaching Apple, Bill Gates, and Barack Obama’s X (formerly Twitter) accounts has been ordered to repay millions in illicit crypto earnings, marking a major development in the 2020 cyber-fraud scandal.
The hacker, Joseph O’Connor, who infamously hijacked over 130 X accounts, has now been hit with a $5.4 million repayment order.
O’Connor, extradited to the US and jailed in 2023, worked with a group of young hackers who used the access to promote a Bitcoin “double your money” scam that reached hundreds of millions of users.
Authorities noted that the scheme lured victims into sending Bitcoin to fraudulent wallets, generating roughly $110,000 at the time.
Notably, the group gained access not through technical wizardry but through social-engineering tricks that convinced X employees to hand over internal tools.
The UK’s Crown Prosecution Service has now recovered 42 BTC and additional assets linked to unrelated hacks, which investigators say O’Connor carried out with acquaintances he met through online gaming.
The ruling underscores ongoing consequences from the breach of these renowned personalities’ accounts, closing another chapter in one of the platform’s most embarrassing security failures.