Authorities have asked for 24 months for Eric Council Jr., the individual who pleaded guilty to a charge for compromising the SEC’s X account in 2024.
The US government has asked a federal judge to impose a two-year sentence for Eric Council Jr., the individual who helped post a fake message announcing the approval of Bitcoin exchange-traded funds through the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC’s) X account.
In a May 12 filing in the US District Court for the District of Columbia, prosecutors recommended Judge Amy Berman Jackson sentence Council to two years in prison for his role in posting a message to the social media platform X suggesting that the SEC had approved spot Bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded funds (ETFs) for the first time in January 2024. The fake announcement, which shook markets in the roughly 24 hours before the regulator actually approved spot Bitcoin ETFs, led to the arrest of Council.
“This case deserves a guidelines range prison sentence,” said US prosecutors. “Defendant profited through a sophisticated fraud scheme involving fraudulently produced identification documents, a series of misrepresentations at telecommunication stores, and the transmission of password reset codes for victim online accounts to co-conspirators located in the United States and abroad. This conduct deserves a significant penalty.”
