Alabama man arrested in SEC hack that affected bitcoin value

Oct. 17 (UPI) -- An Alabama man suspected of hacking the Securities and Exchange Commission's X account in January was arrested Thursday morning in Athens, Ala.

An 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, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Nicole M. Argentieri said in a statement.

Argentieri said, "Council'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."

The DOJ explained the steps allegedly taken by Council to hack the SEC X account, which involved an unauthorized Subscriber Identity Module swap.

"A SIM swap refers to the process of fraudulently inducing a cell phone carrier to reassign a cell phone number from the legitimate subscriber or user's SIM card to a SIM card controlled by a criminal actor," the DOJ said in a statement.

According to the DOJ, Council and alleged co-conspirators used the SIM swap to create a fraudulent ID document in the victim's name and took over the victim's cell phone account.

They then accessed the SEC X account and generated the false post purporting to be from SEC Chairman Gary Gensler .

That temporarily caused bitcoin's price to go up by $1,000 per bitcoin. When the SEC regained control of its X account, BTC values fell by $2,000.

Council was charged by a grand jury with one count of conspiracy to commit aggravated identity theft and access device fraud. He faces a maximum five years in prison if convicted.