Hack of SEC social media account earns 14-month prison sentence for Alabama man

The 25-year-old Alabama man who executed a SIM-swap assault to permit entry to the Securities and Trade Fee (SEC) account on social media platform X will spend greater than a yr in jail for the incident.

Eric Council Jr. had pleaded responsible in February to federal expenses of conspiracy to commit aggravated id theft and entry gadget fraud. The January 2024 assault resulted in fraudulent posts on the SEC’s account that altered the market worth of bitcoin.

Washington, D.C.-based Decide Amy Berman Jackson sentenced Council on Friday to 14 months in jail and ordered the forfeiture of $50,000. After finishing the jail sentence, Council may have “three years of supervised launch with the situation that he not use computer systems to entry the darkish net or commit additional id fraud,” in response to a information launch from the U.S. Legal professional’s Workplace for the District of Columbia.

Council was arrested in October and was dealing with a jail sentence of as much as 5 years.

As a part of the scheme, he used an ID card printer to impersonate the consumer of a authorities telephone linked to the SEC’s account on X, prosecutors mentioned. At an AT&T retailer in Huntsville, Alabama, he persuaded an worker to offer a alternative SIM card for the telephone. 

He then “walked to a close-by Apple retailer the place he bought a brand new iPhone. He inserted the SIM card to activate the telephone, obtained the @SECGov X password reset codes on this new telephone linked to the sufferer’s SIM card and used his private mobile phone to take a photograph of the @SECgov X account reset code to share together with his co-conspirators,” prosecutors mentioned. He later returned the telephone for money.

An unnamed co-conspirator “used the reset code to achieve entry to the @SECGov X account and problem a fraudulent publish within the identify of the then-SEC Chairman, falsely asserting SEC approval of Bitcoin (BTC) Trade Traded Funds (ETFs),” prosecutors mentioned. “The worth of BTC elevated by greater than $1,000 following the publish. Shortly after, the SEC regained management over their X account and confirmed that the announcement was unauthorized and the results of a safety breach, which prompted the worth of BTC to lower by greater than $2,000.”

Council obtained $50,000 to execute the SIM swap, prosecutors mentioned.

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