The post Jan 2024 SEC’s X account hacker got 14 months in prison for cyber fraud appeared on BitcoinEthereumNews.com.

Eric Council Jr. was sentenced to 14 months’ imprisonment for his role in the Jan. 9, 2024, hack of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC’s) X account. The convicted, along with co-conspirators, posted false news of the SEC approving the first Bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded fund in the U.S. In a press release on May 16, 2025, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) stated that Council Jr. will also be subjected to three years of supervised release, a form of parole. The 26-year-old from Huntsville, Alabama, had pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit aggravated identity theft and access device fraud in February. He was arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents in October last year. What Council Jr. did On Aug. 29, 2023, the District of Columbia Court of Appeals in Washington ruled that the SEC was wrong to reject Grayscale’s spot BTC ETF application without proper cause. The court’s decision meant that the SEC would review Grayscale’s application, which it had rejected several times. The court win raised optimism, and the crypto industry was highly anticipating the SEC to approve the first spot Bitcoin ETF any day. Council Jr. and his accomplices took advantage of the market sentiment and announced a fake approval from the SEC’s genuine X account. Court documents indicate that Council Jr. conspired to hack the SEC’s X official account and post fake news of spot BTC ETF approval to manipulate the price of BTC. His role was to carry out a Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) swap, where a bad actor convinces the mobile carrier to port a victim’s phone number to a SIM card controlled by them. According to the DOJ, Council Jr. used an ID card printer to produce fake IDs of victims, whose personal data was supplied to him by co-conspirators.…

---

Filed under: News - @ May 18, 2025 12:25 am