Comments British citizen Joseph James O’Connor is lead by Spanish police officers as he leaves a court in 2021 (Picture: Reuters) A British hacker who carried out one of the biggest ever hacks in the history of the internet has been ordered to pay back £4 million. Joseph James O’Connor, also known as PlugwalkJoe, was sentenced to five years in prison for cybercrime offenses in the US, and the UK has now come for his stolen assets. He was part of a small group who hacked celebrities including Kim Kardashian, Kanye West, Barack Obama, Elon Musk and Joe Biden, using their pages to advertise scams claiming their money would be doubled. One such tweet, from the hacked account of Bill Gates, read: ‘Everyone is asking me to give back. You send $1,000, I send you back $2,000.’ SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk was one of over 100 high profile figures hacked by O’Connor (Picture: AFP) The coordinated posts linked to cryptocurrency wallets for hoodwinked readers to deposit their cash. O’Connor also threatened celebrities with the release of personal images and messages. At the time, Twitter said hackers had targeted staff at the company ‘with access to internal systems and tools’, AKA social engineering, when people are manipulated to reveal confidential information. O’Connor was extradited from Spain to face charges in the US, and was jailed for five years in 2023. The Crown Prosecution Service has now obtained an order to recover 42 Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency that O’Connor made from the scheme, which holds the value of around £4.1m. List of his crimes