Spain's High Court has approved a request from the US State Department to extradite a 23-year-old British man wanted in connection with the alleged 2020 Twitter hack that compromised numerous accounts of celebrities and politicians including former US President Barack Obama and Microsoft’s Bill Gates. Joseph James O'Connor aka “PlugWalkJoe” had refused to be transferred to the US voluntarily following his arrest at his Costa del Sol home in July 2021. According to a court statement, O'Connor is accused of hacking 130 Twitter accounts, as well as compromising the Snapchat account of an unidentified public figure whom he allegedly tried to extort with the threat of publishing nude photographs of the person. The man is also wanted for several cases of “swatting,” prank calls to emergency services aimed at getting large numbers of police to be sent to different locations. In addition to the above charges, the US authorities requested an extension of the extradition with new charges related to various computer hacks with the goal of stealing money and cryptocurrencies, which were later laundered through transfers and transactions. In July 2020, the US Department of Justice charged three individuals for their alleged involvement in the Twitter hack. The hackers used social engineering to gain access to one of Twitter's internal Slack channels, where they found credentials for Twitter's moderation panel. The group used this panel to access and post tweets promoting a cryptocurrency scam. Their scam bitcoin account received more than 400 transfers worth more than $100,000, the US Department of Justice said.
