The serial cybercriminal who hacked Biden and Obama from Estepona

From a villa in Estepona British man Joseph James O'Connor committed almost all manner of cybercrime over nearly three years (2019-2021). Seated in a 600-euro gaming chair facing three ultra-modern screens, PlugWalkJoe, as he called himself on the internet, would steal cryptocurrencies, hack into the Twitter accounts of the world's most powerful men, harass the famous and even underage users on TikTok and endanger many others. His criminal activities attracted the attention of the FBI. The Spanish National Police, at the request of the US agents and after a complex investigation, arrested him in July 2021. He was only 22 years old but he had already put the best intelligence services in the world to the test.

Now comes the moment of truth for O'Connor. Today (Friday, 23 June) he will appear for sentencing before a New York court that could give him almost seven decades in prison and his chances of not receiving a harsh sentence are slim. "He left a huge trail of destruction during his career as a criminal," was the summary from the American investigators following his trial.

PlugWalkJoe's criminal activity began in March 2019 when, by doing SIM card swaps, he seized $794,000 (726,000 euros) in cryptocurrencies from three executives of a Manhattan company. To make it more difficult to recover the money, O'Connor, working with various criminal allies, made dozens of transfers to exchange them for bitcoin.

But PlugWalkJoe, born in Liverpool and the son of a well-known British lawyer living on the Costa del Sol, thought big and wanted not only money, but also power, controlling the lives of all those who crossed his path. Extremely intelligent, he was not drawn to the same pastimes as most young men his age, according to reports from the National Police. His whole life revolved around screen time, where he was a ruthless player.

In June 2019, he hacked into a young woman's phone and Snapchat account and stole her private images. O'Connor sent copies of this sensitive material to his accomplices and threatened the victim with making them public.

This first case was like a training ground for another cruel ploy. In August 2020, O'Connor accessed the TikTok account of "a public figure with millions of followers", according to documents filed with the US courts. He first used that profile to upload promotional videos, including one with his own voice. Later, with the same modus operandi of the previous crime, he stole the victim's personal material and threatened to upload it to a server on Discord, where his followers would have access to it.

O'Connor literally spent all his time on the web. He never left the house, which made police inquiries difficult, and his mother was in charge of bringing him food once a month. His only addictions, in addition to internet crime, were Nutella and vanilla ice cream, which he ordered from home through a company that accepted payment by bitcoin.

By July 2020, O'Connor was already stacking up multiple crimes. He then went one step further with perhaps his most ambitious work: hacking into some of the most important Twitter accounts in the world. Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Kanye West, Kim Kardashian, Elon Musk, Warren Buffett, Apple and Uber were some of the victims of a hack that went viral and for which PlugWalkJoe probably gained the help of an employee from that social media platform, according to the investigation team.

In total, he created more than 130 profiles that he used to ask his followers to send him bitcoins, with the promise of returning double. "If you send me $1,000, I'll give you $2,000 back," he'd declare. In that way he stole $117,000 (107,000€).

Between June and July 2020, O'Connor added another string to his bow. In those months he began stalking the social media of an underage teenager, but he was not satisfied with just stealing personal information. What he planned was a crime that in the US is known as swatting. The term comes from the word SWAT (Special Weapons and Tactics). Swatting is a joke done in very bad taste that consists of reporting an alleged crime so that these elite police units attend. Some of these hoaxes have already caused deaths by accidental shootings or by heart attack.

On June 25, 2020, and from his home in Estepona, O'Connor notified the police in the city where his victim lived in the States, falsely claiming they had started shooting passers-by. The police dispatched officers to search for an armed and dangerous man who did not really exist. Not satisfied with this hoax, on the same day he called a high school, a restaurant and the local sheriff's office, in the same area with new threats. The next month, he contacted the minor's relatives to tell them that he was going to kill them.

Officers from the National Police put a tail on his mother and began to search for the whereabouts of PlugWalkJoe. Once they had a definite lead, they disguised themselves as pizza delivers to verify the address. Finally, in July 2021, he was arrested. In March 2022 and again in January 2023, O'Connor appeared in court before Judge Santiago Pedraz, who in April ordered his extradition.

The Department of Justice in the United States accuses him of ten crimes (three of conspiracy to intentionally access a computer without authorisation, two for doing so on protected computers, two more for attempted extortion, another two for cyberbullying and one more for threats) that can add up to 67 years in prison, since at his first hearing in New York he pleaded guilty to all of them.

"O'Connor's criminal activities were flagrant and malicious and his conduct affected the lives of many people. He harassed, threatened and extorted money from his victims, causing them considerable emotional harm," said Assistant Attorney General Kenneth A. Polite, Jr. of the US Department of Justice's Criminal Division. His colleague, prosecutor Ismail J. Ramsey, sent a message to cybercriminals like O'Connor: "This is a warning to everyone who uses their computers to commit crime: the arm of the law is long."