Behind Bars: Gates, Musk, Kardashian, Biden Twitter Hacker Gets 3 Years
A massive Twitter hack that led to an FBI investigation has resulted in a three-year prison sentence for a teen after he fraudulently gained access to several high-profile users’ accounts.
The Florida hacker, Graham Ivan Clark, 18, will serve three years in juvenile prison followed by three years of probation after he masterminded a hijacking of several Twitter accounts in a Bitcoin-soliciting scam last July, the Tampa Bay Times reported.
Clark, who pleaded guilty to state charges of organized fraud on Tuesday, hacked into Twitter accounts that were held by former President Barack Obama, President Joe Biden, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, Kim Kardashian West, as well as companies such as Apple and Uber, the news outlet said.
As part of Clark’s scam, he fraudulently used the accounts to tweet messages requesting Bitcoin from the account holders’ followers and saying he would double any currency payments sent to the published address.
In his tweets, he wrote, “all bitcoin sent to our address below will be sent back to you doubled,” The Guardian said.
Clark gained access to the accounts by convincing Twitter employees that he worked in the IT departments at the companies.
According to the Tampa Bay Times, Clark received about $117,000 in Bitcoin before he was caught. He has since returned the monies, his lawyer said.
Twitter acknowledged the incident at the time, saying on social media that it was investigating the hijacking and that it believed that the attack was brought on by social engineering as it “successfully targeted some of our employees with access to internal systems and tools.”
Twitter suspended accounts over the incident, preventing message sending for several hours as it investigated the cyberattack and secured the platform.
Clark was a high school senior when he hacked the accounts and was arrested after several days, according to The Guardian.
“Graham Clark needs to be held accountable for that crime, and other potential scammers out there need to see the consequences,” Andrew Warren, Hillsborough, Florida, state attorney, said in a statement obtained by the Tampa Bay Times.
“In this case, we’ve been able to deliver those consequences while recognizing that our goal with any child, whenever possible, is to have them learn their lesson without destroying their future,” he added.
The hijacking by Clark led to an investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation over concerns of Twitter’s security protocol, especially during an election year when the platform was used for political discussion, Benzinga reported.
At the time, it was thought that state-sponsored hackers performed the cyberattack.
The case is ongoing with two others, Mason Sheppard of the U.K. and Nima Fazeli of Orlando, Florida, also being charged in the attack, The Guardian reported.
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