An Alabama man was charged over the January hack of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's X account ahead of its highly anticipated decision to approve spot-Bitcoin exchange traded funds.
Federal Bureau of Investigation agents arrested Eric Council Jr. on Thursday morning and charged the 25-year-old with conspiring to commit aggravated identity theft, according to a statement from the Justice Department.
Council allegedly used the stolen personal information of an unnamed victim as well as an iPhone to break through the X account's security measures, according to the indictment. The alleged scheme at one point involved Council impersonating an FBI employee who lost his phone, the government says.
The SEC's account on X, formerly Twitter, was hacked in early January, just a day before it was set to announce approval of the first-ever spot market Bitcoin exchange traded products. The hacker took control of the agency's official account and posted a message that said the SEC had granted approval to a handful of companies' applications to trade the products.
The approval of the ETFs, which followed a long legal fight between the SEC and the issuer of one of the funds, was one of the most eagerly anticipated events ever in the digital-asset industry. The green light from the regulator helped push the original cryptocurrency to a record high of $73,797 in March. The funds have seen more than $20 billion of inflows and collectively now hold about $64.5 billion worth of assets, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
The fake post with the premature approval caused the price of Bitcoin to surge $1,000, the Justice Department said. Once the SEC regained control of its X account and revealed the post was fake, Bitcoin fell by $2,000, according to the statement.
"The SEC thanks law enforcement for their vigilance in seeking accountability for those responsible for the breach of the SEC's X account," a spokesperson for the agency said in a statement.
