Graham Clark, the 17-year-old alleged mastermind of the July 15 Twitter hack has been arrested in Florida, late Friday.
The large-scale Twitter hack had compromised 130 accounts, including those of high profile individuals such as Jeff Bezos, Barack Obama, and Elon Musk.
Bloomberg reported that the teenager is expected to face up to 30 felony charges for hacking those accounts, posting messages on their behalf, and luring additional victims into sending him Bitcoin donations worth more than $100,000.
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Hillsborough District Attorney, Andrew Warren, explained that the charges include communications and organized fraud, fraudulent use of personal information and access to a computer without authority.
BREAKING: 17-year-old in Florida arrested for Twitter hack that compromised 130 accounts, including Jeff Bezos, Barack Obama and Elon Musk https://t.co/ZA5HgGn3fK @KartikayM @WilliamTurton via @technology
— Mike Dorning (@MikeDorning) July 31, 2020
Attorney Warren further explained that “Clark will be charged as an adult under Florida law, rather than federal, because Florida law allows us greater flexibility to charge a minor as an adult in a financial fraud case. He gained access to Twitter accounts and to the internal controls of Twitter through compromising a Twitter employee.
“We appreciate the swift actions of law enforcement in this investigation and will continue to cooperate as the case progresses. For our part, we are focused on being transparent and providing updates regularly.”
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Back story: Nairametrics reported when Bitcoin scammers were on a rampage on Twitter late July 15, 2020, even as many top personalities had their accounts tweeting about a BTC giveaway.
Later, it became obvious that the breach was much more serious when leading brands and famous people including, Barack Obama, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Kanye West, and Uber tweeted that they would double Twitter users’ bitcoins.
However, Cameron Winklevoss, co-founder of the world’s leading crypto exchange Gemini, disclosed that the scammers were only able to make away with “a paltry sum,” though he wondered if there were underlying reasons for the attack.
