Key dealers
- Eric Council Jr. was sentenced to 14 months for his role in hacking SEC’s X account.
- The hack led to a false bitcoin ETF approach, which caused market fluctuations.
Eric Council Jr., who helped to facilitate the unauthorized takeover of SEC’s X account that led to a fake Bitcoin ETF post, will spend the next 14 months in prison, the district court Amy Berman Jackson announced the verdict on Friday.
The 26-year-old from Athens, Alabama, conspired with others to implement SIM Swap attacks on SEC’s official X-account (@secgov).
The court’s documents show that around January 9, 2024, the Council used a false ID to abandon a customer in an AT&T store to get a SIM card bound to SEC’s mobile number.
The Council then activated the SIM card on a new iPhone and received password reset codes for SEC’s X account. After that, he captured password reset codes and shared them with their community trees.
With the help of the recovery code, one of the Council Partners successfully opened SEC’s X account and lost a false announcement that SEC had approved Tot Bitcoin ETFS.
Posten sent Bitcoin’s price raised by more than $ 1,000 in a few minutes, before it dropped over $ 2,000 after Sec’s clarification of the violation.
The hack occurred just one day before Sec Green has the first round of Tot Bitcoin ETFs in the United States. Advice were arrested In October last year.
While he did not write the post that directly triggered Bitcoin’s price measure, prosecutors stated that he played a key role in enabling the system.
“The council used brave swimming-swapping and identity theft to manipulate the bitcoin market in an attempt to adapt his and his fellow meetings,” said the FBI Washington Field Office Assistant Director in Charge Steven J. Jensen. “Today’s punishment shows that those who use the perceived anonymity for digital fraud to exploit public markets will be masked and faced with the FBI.”
Investigators also found that the Council had been involved in other attempts at SIM swaps and identity fraud. During a search of his apartment in June 2024, agents recovered a portable ID printer, a false ID card and a laptop containing templates for additional counterfeit documents.
Internet searches discovered on his devices included “Secgov Hack”, “Telegram Sim Swap” and “What are some signs that the FBI is after you” to name a few.
The Council, which invoked guilty of conspiracy to commit aggravated identity theft in February, must lose $ 50,000 – the exact amount he received to perform SIM swaps.
He will also serve three years of monitoring release with restrictions on access to the dark web and conducts identity -related crimes.
The hack also revealed large weakness for cyber security within Sec.
A indefinite report Shared in December last year, which preceded the January chop that led to a false bitcoin ETF approach, found that SEC’s Cybersecurity infrastructure was “not effective” and “needs further improvements” in several areas.
