Eric Council Jr. was sentenced to 14 months’ imprisonment for his role in the Jan. 9, 2024, hack of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC’s) X account. The convicted, along with co-conspirators, posted false news of the SEC approving the first Bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded fund in the U.S.
In a press release on May 16, 2025, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) stated that Council Jr. will also be subjected to three years of supervised release, a form of parole.
The 26-year-old from Huntsville, Alabama, had pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit aggravated identity theft and access device fraud in February. He was arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents in October last year.
What Council Jr. did
On Aug. 29, 2023, the District of Columbia Court of Appeals in Washington ruled that the SEC was wrong to reject Grayscale’s spot BTC ETF application without proper cause. The court’s decision meant that the SEC would review Grayscale’s application, which it had rejected several times.
The court win raised optimism, and the crypto industry was highly anticipating the SEC to approve the first spot Bitcoin ETF any day. Council Jr. and his accomplices took advantage of the market sentiment and announced a fake approval from the SEC’s genuine X account.
Court documents indicate that Council Jr. conspired to hack the SEC’s X official account and post fake news of spot BTC ETF approval to manipulate the price of BTC. His role was to carry out a Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) swap, where a bad actor convinces the mobile carrier to port a victim’s phone number to a SIM card controlled by them.
According to the DOJ, Council Jr. used an ID card printer to produce fake IDs of victims, whose personal data was supplied to him by co-conspirators. He then used the fake IDs to gain access to the victim’s number to access the SEC’s X account and post the fake news. Council Jr. received payment in BTC for his role in the SEC’s X account hack.
The damage Council Jr. contributed to
Immediately after the posting of the fake news, the price of each BTC increased by more than $1,000. But after the SEC chair, Gary Gensler, acknowledged the hack and dismissed the message of hackers as fake, the BTC price crashed by over $2,000 per BTC, CryptoSlate data shows.
BTC price rose to $48,000 after the fake news was posted, but crashed to $45,000 after Gensler’s refutation. Around $50 billion was wiped off Bitcoin’s market capitalization in the 24 hours following the posting of the fake news. The price fluctuation also caused a total of $220 million in liquidations.
FBI Criminal Investigative Division Acting Assistant Director Darren Cox called hack “a calculated criminal act meant to deceive the public and manipulate financial markets.” He added:
“By spreading false information to influence the markets, Council [Jr.] attempted to erode public trust and exploit the financial system.”