Someone 25 years old from Alabama was arrested on charges that he helped plan the hack of the SEC’s X account in January. This hack caused the price of bitcoin BTCUSD 0.59% to quickly go through the roof.
Eric Council Jr., of Athens, Alabama, was arrested Thursday and charged with helping to steal someone else’s name who had access to the SEC’s X account and using it to take over their cell phone in a scam called SIM-swapping.
Federal officials said Council was part of an unnamed group of people who worked together in a SIM-swapping scheme. They would use stolen identities to get people’s phone accounts moved to a new phone they owned.
Police say that early in January, the group learned that someone whose name they had stolen could log into the SEC’s X account.
After taking over the phone account, the group changed the SEC’s X account login using the two-factor authentication code that was sent to the phone that had been hacked.
Then they sent a tweet that said the SEC had approved the sale of a bitcoin exchange-traded fund, but it wasn’t. It was fake and said it was from SEC Chair Gary Gensler.
It said, “Today the SEC gives approval for #Bitcoin ETFs to list on all registered national securities exchanges.” But it was not real.
The SEC was thinking about whether to allow those funds at the time. The trade product would be officially approved by the SEC the next day.
The price of bitcoin went up by more than $1,000 right after the tweet was sent. The value of bitcoin dropped by over $2,000 after the SEC told everyone that its X account had been hacked and the tweet was fake.
“SIM swapping is a way for bad people to get unauthorized access to private information about a person or business in order to commit a crime.” FBI special agent David Geist said, “In this case, the unauthorized actor used SIM swapping to mess with the world’s financial markets.”
It wasn’t clear right away if Council had hired a lawyer, and he couldn’t be reached right away for comment.
Authorities say Council, who used fake names online like “Ronin,” “AGiantSchnauzer,” and “@EasyMunny,” took over the victim’s phone account by making a fake ID card in their name and then showing it at an AT&T store in Huntsville, Alabama, to get access to the account.
Police say that after the hack, Council looked online for things like “SECGOV hack,” “federal identity theft statute,” “how can I know for sure if I am being investigated by the FBI,” and “What are the signs that you are being investigated by law enforcement or the FBI even if they have not contacted you.”
