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POCA civil recovery case success
17 Nov 2025
Shahid Miah of DBT & Partners secures a successful outcome for his client in another POCA civil recovery case
The UK High Court in London recognised that a POCA Civil Recovery Order made for the sum of £4.1 million ought properly to recognise the Defendant’s outstanding liability for a Restitution Order by a US Court in the Southern District of New York US Court.
Shahid Miah of DBT & Partners acted for the Defendant Mr Joseph O’Connor on a claim for civil recovery of over £4M of cryptocurrency. The claim had been made in the absence of the Defendant who at the time had been serving a sentence in the USA for a high profile hacking case involving the hijacking of more than 130 Twitter accounts in July 2020 including those of Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Jeff Bezos, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and Kim Kardashian.
The case has attracted significant media attention due to it involving not only the hacking of high -profile individuals but both UK and US legal jurisdictions.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-66007724.
Twitter hack: Joseph O’Connor jailed for celebrity cyber attack – BBC News
The DPP’s claim for civil recovery under Pt 5 of POCA was issued in the High Court in April 2024. The background to the crypto-currency offences was the hacking of the computer systems of a US Manhattan based cryptocurrency provider and thereafter the theft of what is now valued by the High Court in the region of £4.1million. In 2023, having been extradited from Spain to the US, Mr O’Connor pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit computer intrusions, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and conspiracy to commit money laundering in proceedings in the Southern District of New York. Mr O’Connor also pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit computer intrusion, two counts of committing computer intrusions, making extortive communications, two counts of stalking, and making threatening communications in separate proceedings brought in the Northern District of California. A New York court sentenced Mr O’Connor to 5 years imprisonment and made a Restitution Order of over $2M to be paid by the Defendant to victims of his offending. In 2025 Mr O’Connor was removed from the US to the United Kingdom where the claim for civil recovery was made.
The High Court described this as a sophisticated cyber-intrusion which resulted in cryptocurrency being stolen which was then moved quickly through dozens of transactions before being exchanged for Bitcoin.
Prosecutor Adrian Foster Chief Crown Prosecutor for the CPS Proceeds of Crime Division said the civil recovery order showed that “even when someone is not convicted in the UK, we are still able to ensure they do not benefit from their criminality… Joseph James O’Connor targeted well-known individuals and used their accounts to scam people out of their crypto assets and money”.
Mr O’Connor via his UK legal team intervened and sought an opportunity to argue against the making of the proposed Recovery Order in the terms sought by the DPP. It was argued that the procedure adopted was unfair as the Defendant had had no opportunity to argue against its terms. He also sought to argue that the DPP’s position on the proposed Recovery Order was an infringement of his Article 6 rights and his A1P1 rights because the proposed Order would deprive him of the only assets available to him to discharge his liability under the US Restitution Order. Mr O’Connor sought an Order that would enable the assets to be recovered, whilst recognising his liability to the US Court. Having been released from prison in the US he denied that he had been served with the claim and the Acknowledgment of Service whilst in US custody as claimed by the DPP.
17
Nov