U.S. authorities charged an Alabama man in connection with the hack of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) Twitter account in January that caused the price of bitcoin to spike in response to a false tweet about the regulator approving bitcoin ETFs.
An indictment was unsealed on Thursday charging Eric Council Jr., 25, with conspiracy to commit aggravated identity theft and access device fraud in connection with the breach of the SEC’s Twitter account.
According to the indictment, Council was able to take over the account after unnamed co-conspirators in the D.C. area provided him with personal information and an ID card template for an SEC employee with access to the regulator’s Twitter account.
That information was used to create a fake ID, which was, in turn, used to obtain a SIM (subscriber identity module) card linked to the victim’s phone. This enabled the conspirators to gain access to the SEC’s Twitter account and post the false tweet.
“The indictment alleges that Eric Council Jr. unlawfully accessed the SEC’s account on X by using the stolen identity of a person who had access to the account to take over their cellphone number,” said principal deputy assistant attorney general Nicole Argentieri in a release.
“Council Jr.’s co-conspirators then allegedly used this unauthorized access to the X account to falsely announce that the SEC had approved listing bitcoin ETFs, which caused the price of bitcoin to rise by $1,000 and then fall by $2,000,” she said.
Council, who was arrested on Thursday and is expected to appear in court in Alabama, used online aliases Ronin, AGiantSchnauzer and EasyMunny, the indictment noted.
The allegations have not been proven, and Council is presumed to be innocent.