(Reuters) – A citizen of the UK who was extradited to New York from Spain final month has pleaded responsible to cyberstalking and laptop hacking schemes, together with the 2020 hack of the social media website Twitter, the U.S. Justice Division stated on Tuesday.

Joseph James O’Connor, 23, was charged in each North Dakota and New York. The North Dakota case was transferred to the U.S. District Courtroom for the Southern District of New York.

O’Connor pleaded responsible to expenses together with conspiring to commit laptop intrusions, to commit wire fraud and to commit cash laundering.

O’Connor, who was extradited to the U.S. on April 26, may also forfeit greater than $794,000 and pay restitution to victims, prosecutors stated. He faces a most of 77 years in jail at sentencing on June 23.

“O’Connor’s legal actions have been flagrant and malicious, and his conduct impacted a number of individuals’s lives. He harassed, threatened, and extorted his victims, inflicting substantial emotional hurt,” Assistant Lawyer Common Kenneth Well mannered stated in an announcement.

Prosecutors stated the schemes included gaining unauthorized entry to social media accounts on Twitter in July 2020 in addition to a TikTok account in August 2020. Alongside along with his co-conspirators, O’Connor stole a minimum of $794,000 value of cryptocurrency.

The July 2020 Twitter assault hijacked quite a lot of verified accounts, together with these of then-Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and Tesla (NASDAQ:) Inc CEO Elon Musk, who now owns Twitter.

The accounts of former President Barack Obama, actuality TV star Kim Kardashian, Invoice Gates, Warren Buffett, Benjamin Netanyahu, Jeff Bezos, Michael Bloomberg and Kanye West have been additionally hit.

The alleged hacker used the accounts to solicit digital foreign money, prompting Twitter to stop some verified accounts from publishing messages for a number of hours till safety might be restored.