Eric Council Jr., a 26-year-old from Alabama, has been sentenced to 14 months in jail for hacking the SEC’s Twitter account and posting a fraudulent Bitcoin ETF approval announcement, inflicting a short lived $1,000 Bitcoin price spike. This incident underscores ongoing vulnerabilities in cryptocurrency markets.
SIM Swapping Assault on SEC Twitter Account
On Could 17, 2025, Eric Council Jr., a 26-year-old resident of Athens, Alabama, was sentenced to 14 months in jail for his position in a January 2024 hack of the U.S. Securities and Change Fee’s (SEC) Twitter account.
The unauthorized takeover, executed by a complicated SIM swap assault, allowed Council and his co-conspirators to submit a pretend announcement claiming the SEC had authorized spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs).
The fraudulent submit, which appeared on January 9, 2024, acknowledged, “Today the SEC grants approval for #Bitcoin ETFs for listing on all registered national securities exchanges,” triggering a direct $1,000 surge in Bitcoin’s price.
Council, identified on-line as “Ronin,” “Easymunny,” and “AGiantSchnauzer,” collaborated with others who offered private details about an SEC worker with entry to the @SECGov account. Utilizing a conveyable ID printer, he created a pretend driver’s license and impersonated the worker at an AT&T retailer in Huntsville, Alabama, to acquire a SIM card linked to the sufferer’s telephone.
Council then bought an iPhone, intercepted password reset codes for the SEC’s Twitter account, and shared them together with his accomplices, who posted the misleading tweet. He was paid roughly $50,000 in Bitcoin BTC for his position, which he later returned for money.
This case follows one other high-profile crypto crime, the place 12 people have been charged in a $263 million racketeering scheme involving cyberattacks and bodily break-ins, highlighting the rising sophistication of crypto-related fraud.
Cybersecurity in Crypto Stays a Prime Concern
The SEC hack, occurring simply in the future earlier than the company’s official approval of 11 spot Bitcoin ETFs on January 10, 2024, uncovered vulnerabilities in each institutional safety and cryptocurrency markets.
U.S. Lawyer Jeanine Ferris Pirro emphasised that such schemes “threaten the health and integrity of our market system,” whereas FBI Performing Assistant Director Darren Cox referred to as the hack a “calculated criminal act meant to deceive the public.”
Proof recovered from Council’s laptop computer, together with searches like “SECGOV hack” and “how can I know for sure if I am being investigated by the FBI,” underscored his consciousness of the crime’s severity.
Different latest crypto safety breaches, such because the Could 2025 Coinbase information theft, the place hackers bribed help brokers to steal consumer info, and violent kidnappings concentrating on crypto millionaires in Europe. These incidents spotlight the pressing want for enhanced cybersecurity measures, from two-factor authentication to insider menace detection.
Council’s 14-month sentence, adopted by three years of supervised launch, goals to discourage related crimes, however the speedy evolution of cyber techniques poses ongoing challenges for regulators and exchanges alike.