Last week, Joseph O’Connor, aka PlugWalkJoe, a 22-year-old citizen of the UK was arrested in Spain. He allegedly played a role in the July 15, 2020, Twitter hack.

The high-profile hack attack compromised 130 accounts including former President Obama, President Donald Trump, Joe Biden before he was elected, and other celebrities including Bill Gates and Elon Musk. And netted the cybercriminals over $100,000 in Bitcoin.

O’Connor faces multiple charges filed Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

 A U.S. Justice Department press release said that O’Connor is being charged with “computer intrusions related to takeovers of TikTok and Snapchat user accounts.” In an unrelated crime, he is also being charged with cyberstalking a juvenile victim.

O’Connor was arrested on multiple counts of conspiring to and illegally accessing computers without authorization, and “with the intent to extort from a person a thing of value, transmitting a communication containing a threat,” among several other charges, the Justice Department writes. 

O’Connor, if convicted, would be sentenced in a federal district court. And the judge would be considering the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors.

O’Connor was implicated in the Twitter hack

Krebs on Security reports that O’Connor is a well-known sim-swapper. He is alleged to have hijacked valuable social media accounts by manipulating cellular network employees to duplicate phone numbers. And this allows hackers to intercept two-factor authorization requests.

Last year, a New York Times story featured interviews with several people involved in the attack. The young men told The Times they had only brokered the purchase of accounts from the Twitter hacker who they knew as “Kirk” aka PlugWalkJoe.

One of those interviewed used the alias “Ever So Anxious,” a 19-year from the U.K. who was later identified as Mason (Chaewon) Sheppard. 

Chaewon tied the Twitter compromise back to a 21-year-old from the U.K. known as Kirk. And has also been using the nickname PlugWalkJoe.

In a 2020 interview with The New York Times about  the Twitter breach, O’Connor identified himself as “PlugWalkJoe.” And he confirmed that the hackers obtained Twitter credentials from an internal company Slack channel to take over the accounts. 

At the time, O’Connor claimed, “They can come to arrest me. I would laugh at them. I haven’t done anything,” he told the Times.

Three arrested within weeks of hack

Within a few weeks of the Twitter hack, 3 of the hacker gang were charged.

Nima (Rolex) Fazeli,  22-year-old  was charged with a criminal complaint in Northern California. And charges include aiding intentional access to a protected computer. 

Mason (Chaewon) Sheppard, was charged in California. And the charges include conspiracy to commit wire fraud, money laundering, and unauthorized access to a computer.

Graham Ivan Clark, the “teenage mastermind” of the entire plan, was arrested in July last year. He was hit with 30 felony charges, including “organized fraud, communications fraud, one count of fraudulent use of personal information with over $100,000 or 30 or more victims, 10 counts of fraudulent use of personal information and one count of access to a computer or electronic device without authority.”

Clark,17, was charged as an adult. And has been sentenced to three years in prison.