Florida teenager, 17, arrested over Twitter hack
A teenager has been arrested in Florida under 17 counts of communications fraud for hacking Twitter accounts belonging to Apple, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Microsoft CEO Bill Gates, Kanye West, and more, two weeks ago in a scam that illegally raked in over $100,000 in bitcoin.
Local News Channel 8 claim 17-year-old Graham Clark has been arrested in connection with the Twitter hack that happened on July 15. The charges he’s facing include one count of organized fraud, 17 counts of communications fraud, one count of fraudulent use of personal information with over $100,000 or 30 or more victims, 10 counts of fraudulent use of personal information and one count of access to computer or electronic device without authority.
The hack saw numerous high-profile Twitter accounts tweet scam messages claiming to offer a double return on Bitcoin when unsuspecting followers transfer money to the scammers. It was said that the FBI were assisting Twitter in their investigations after the hacker had targeted Twitter employees “with access to internal systems and tools.”
Hillsborough State Attorney Andrew Warren said the US Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California, the FBI, the IRS, and the Secret Service were all part of the investigation, with a 19-year-old from the UK and a 22-year-old from Florida also charged in relation to the hack.
I want to congratulate our federal law enforcement partners – the US Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California, the FBI, the IRS, and the Secret Service – as well as the Florida Department of Law enforcement. They worked quickly to investigate and identify the perpetrator of a sophisticated and extensive fraud,” State Attorney Warren said in his statement.
Twitter says the hackers responsible for the breach fooled the social media company’s employees into giving them high-level administrative credentials using a phone scam.
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Northern District of California, Clark is one of three people charged for their alleged roles in the Twitter hack. The two other suspects were identified as 22-year-old Nima Fazeli, a.k.a. “Rolex,” of Orlando and 19-year-old Mason Sheppard, a.k.a. “Chaewon,” of the United Kingdom.