Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - He Wouldn't Stop Hacking Celebrities - The PlugWalkJoe story

Episode Date: May 25, 2025

Joseph James O'Connor, known online as "PlugwalkJoe," orchestrated a high-profile cyberattack that compromised over 130 Twitter accounts belonging to prominent figures such as Barack Obama, Elon Musk, Joe Biden, and Apple. Exploiting Twitter's internal tools through social engineering tactics, O'Connor and his associates disseminated fraudulent messages promoting a scam.

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Now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus for bonus subscribers. terms apply. So this celebrity leaked her own nudes and somehow this kid went to prison. Now the kid goes by the name PlugWalk Joe and he's 19 during this time and he's a hacker living in England. And PlugWalk Joe wants what a lot of people want. Money and internet attention. So one day in 2018, he uses his hacking skills and he starts targeting well-known people. Like he starts off by hacking Logan Paul's YouTube channel, Then he hacks Logan Paul's Twitter account, and on the Twitter account, he tweets as Logan to Logan's followers that if they want to see Logan Paul's sex tape to follow PlugWog Joe, which is stupid, but I don't know, it's kind of funny.

The next year, in 2019, he and his hacker buddies target a cryptocurrency company based in Manhattan, and they use a sim swapping technique, and they take over the phones of some of the employees there. And doing this, they're able to steal 794,000. thousand dollars worth a crypto from this company, which is great for PlugWalk Joe because now he has some money. And he could lay low and enjoy all this new money he got, but that's not what PlugWalk Joe does. Otherwise, I wouldn't be making this video. See, he still wants some of that internet attention, which means he has to hack some more influencers so that he can use their social media to shout out his name.

So that same year, he moves from England all the way down to Spain. And from here, he and his hacker friends, they target more well-known people's Twitter accounts. He hacks King Batch, he hacks James Charles, he hacks Chloe Grace Moretz, and he just posts a bunch of somewhat random trolley stuff, nothing too nefarious. It really seems like they're just trying to get a few laughs. But after that, he and his hacking buddies, they go after an even bigger target. Jack Dorsey, the co-founder and then CEO of Twitter. And so they hack him.

And of course, they just use his account to shout themselves out and post a bunch of racial slurs. Then PlugWalk Joe hacks into actress Bella Thorne's phone using a sim swap technique. And through this, he gets access to her Twitter account, and he starts tweeting out dumb sh** shouting his account out again. Follow my homie plug talk Joe. But he also gets access to her Snapchat. And there, he gets access to her intimate photos that she had taken for her boyfriend, her nudes. And I guess he just starts texting her phone because he has all of her information now,

and he tries to blackmail her. He demands that she make a public video thanking him and tagging him in all his friends accounts. And if she doesn't, of course, he's going to release her nudes. And Bella Thorne, who's apparently some kind of badass because she refuses to be blackmailed. And she's like, fuck you. And she releases all her nudes herself. She just posts them all on Twitter. So good for her.

But whatever. PlugWalk Joe just keeps going. And in 2020, he's around 21 years old at this time. He and his friends hack TikTok star Dixie Dimeleo's TikTok account. And they just upload a bunch of random videos to her page. And one of the hackers' friends uses her account to go live. Hey, follow at Coyd on Instagram. Follow at erotic.

Then they also hacked TikToker Addison Ray's account and they take it over for a while. Now, you might be thinking, I don't know, Ray. Plug Walk Joe sounds kind of cool. So what if he hacked a? few influencers and stole a little crypto. Like, that's not a big deal. Oh, but PlugWalk Joe has a bit of a darker side. Because one day, that same year, he's hanging out in a Discord server, a bunch of hackers hang out in. And there, he meets this girl, who will call 16, because she's 16. In 16, she lives

in California, and she's also a bit of a hacking enthusiast herself. And despite the age difference, Joe immediately starts creeping on her. He thinks she is foin, and he moves on her real quick. Within a few days, he's sending her lots of inappropriate messages, explicit inappropriate messages, like things he wants to do to her, things I won't repeat. Here's the thing, though. 16 isn't really feeling him at all. She thinks he's way too old for her, and correctly so. But PlugWalk Joe doesn't seem to care.

He starts cyber-stalking her, sending her more creepy, explicit messages. Within a few days, he has already sent her a picture of his job. And so 16, she gets tired of him pretty quickly, and she threatens to hack him in retaliation. She also goes over to the Discord server that they hang out in, and she posts that picture of his junk that he sent her for everyone to see and laugh at. And this pisses Plug Walk Joe off. And he's like, oh, hell no. And he is not going to let this slide.

And he decides to swat her. At one point, he calls the local police in her area, saying he's an armed and dangerous individual and he threatens to unalive his wife and children and then he gives them what he thinks is her address so that the police show up to her house. He also emails her school's principal pretending to be her

and he says that she has plans to bring a pew-poo to school to take out some very specific groups of people. He also calls the local sheriff, I guess pretending to be her and he claims that she's going to blow up the local airport. He also calls her relatives and he starts telling them that he's going to harm them and 16. Because bro is like suddenly a terrorist.

And all of these swatting attempts I just named happened in the same day. Now, I guess he eventually leaves her alone. I actually don't know how that saga between them ended. I couldn't find anything on it. But what I do know is that around this time, there's another Twitter hack. But this one is huge, the biggest in the history of Twitter. Because PlugWalk Joe and a bunch of hackers

apparently get together and they hack over 130 Twitter accounts, mostly of extremely famous people, including the accounts of Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Jeff Bezos, Apple, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Kanye West, Floyd Mayweather, Wiz Khalifa, a bunch of people. But this time, they're promoting a link to some kind of Bitcoin scam. And through this Bitcoin scam, they're able to make $118,000 in Bitcoin from people who clicked on the link and fell. for the scam. And I assume all these hackers end up splitting up the money between themselves.

Here's the thing, though, because they targeted such high profile accounts in this stunt, this hack blows the fuck up. And we have breaking news from Twitter. The company is dealing with a major hack. The accounts include former Vice President Joe Biden, Elon Musk, Apple. And once this starts getting media attention and it's all over the news, I guess PlugWog Joe realizes the feds are probably going to get involved. Which, yeah, if you hack a former person, president's Twitter account the government might investigate you. And so Plug Walk Joe wants to get out ahead of this. So from Spain he calls the American feds on the telephone and he basically says, ah, this hack it wasn't me. And he gives them the

names of other hackers who he says were involved. Not only that, he admits to a bunch of those smaller Twitter hacks he did in the past. He basically says, yeah, those hacks were me, but this big one wasn't. So, not only is he admitting to past crimes, even if he thinks they were small, but he's inadvertently linking himself to this big recent Twitter hack. And so immediately the feds open an investigation into him, and they start gathering evidence against him. And they start working with Spanish National Police to surveil him,

and eventually Spanish National Police, boom, they bust in and they raid his apartment, and bam, they arrest Plug Walk Joe. Here's a picture of him getting escorted by police. And he spends two years in Spanish jail, and then he's extradited to the U.S., and there he gets sentenced to five years in prison.