Eric Council, aka “Ronin,” of Georgia, pleaded guilty to one felony count of conspiracy to commit aggravated identity theft.
WASHINGTON — A Georgia man pleaded guilty Monday to identity theft in connection with a hack of a Security & Exchange Commission (SEC) social media account in order to manipulate the price of the cryptocurrency Bitcoin.
Eric Council, 25, of Athens, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to committee aggravated identity theft. He’ll face up to five years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000 at his sentencing hearing in May.
According to charging documents, Council was paid as part of a conspiracy to conduct SIM swamps to gain access to social media and virtual currency accounts. In a SIM swap, hackers convince telephone companies to reassign a mobile number from a victim’s phone to their own.
In early January 2024, one of Council’s alleged co-conspirators identified an individual who had access to the telephone number linked to the SECGov account on X, formerly Twitter. Council was then instructed to perform a SIM swap on the number. He did so at a Huntsville, Alabama, AT&T store by claiming to be an FBI employee who’d broken his phone.
Once obtaining access to the number, a co-conspirator used it to reset the password on the SEC’s X account. They then used the account to publish a false statement saying the SEC had approved the sale of Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs). ETFs allow assets to be traded on the stock market.
The post caused the price of Bitcoin to shoot up $1,000, and then crash $2,000 after the SEC regained control of its account and posted news of the hack.
At the time, no Bitcoin ETFs had been approved in the U.S. – although the SEC did eventually announcing it was approving a limited number of spot ETFs a day later.
According to investigators, Council was also involved in other SIM swamp attempts during 2024 and admitted to being paid approximately $50,000 by members of the conspiracy.
Council, who used the online monikers “Ronin” and “AgiantSchnauzer,” was arrested in October. He’s scheduled to be sentenced by U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson on May 16.
