Man Pleads Guilty to Hacking Official SEC X Account and Falsely Claiming Regulator Had Approved Bitcoin ETFs

An Alabama man has pled guilty to hacking the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) X account last year and faces up to five years in prison.

In January 2024, Eric Council Jr., 25, conspired with others to commandeer the SEC’s X account and prematurely announce the approval of spot Bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded funds (ETF) in the US, according to the Department of Justice (DOJ).

The fake ETF announcement caused the price of Bitcoin to increase by more than $1,000 and then drop by more than $2,000 after the SEC regained control of its X account and declared the statement to be unauthorized and the result of a security breach. The regulator legitimately greenlit spot Bitcoin ETFs soon after the security incident.

The DOJ alleges Council carried out the hack through an unauthorized SIM swap, which involves fraudulently persuading a cellphone carrier to reassign another person’s contact number to a SIM card controlled by a bad actor.

Council was paid in Bitcoin to use the stolen identity of a person who had access to the SEC’s X account, and then the DOJ alleges that his co-conspirators made the fraudulent post.

The Alabama man pled guilty to conspiracy to commit aggravated identity theft and access device fraud and is scheduled to be sentenced in May. He faces up to five years in prison.

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