Joe TidyCyber correspondent, BBC World Service
A British man who hacked high profile Twitter – now known as X – accounts as part of a Bitcoin scam has been ordered to hand over £4.1m in stolen cryptocurrency.
Joseph O’Connor, from Liverpool, hijacked more than 130 accounts in July 2020, including those of Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Elon Musk.
The 26-year-old fled to Spain where his mother lives before being arrested and extradited to the US for trial.
He was sentenced to five years for cyber crimes but now must hand over a haul of crypto he gathered through various hacks and scams.
O’Connor, who went by the alias PlugwalkJoe, carried out the so-called “giveaway scam” with other young men and teenagers – breaking into Twitter’s internal systems and taking over high profile accounts.
Three other hackers have been charged over the scam, with US teenager Graham Clark pleading guilty to his part in the de
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