The teen hacker who hacked famous Twitter accounts last year to score Bitcoin will sign a plea bargain in a Florida court today. His lawyers presented the paperwork yesterday. Graham Ivan Clark, the Florida teen, is the mastermind who hacked dozens of celebrity Twitter accounts in July 2020. He will serve three years in prison and three years of probation after pleading guilty to financial fraud charges. Clark hacked into verified Twitter accounts of celebrity users like Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, and even socialite Kim Kardashian. He was then capable of sending messages asking people to transfer Bitcoin.
He sent tweets from the accounts of Joe Biden, Barak Obama, Uber, and others asking to send Bitcoin. Prosecutors contend that Clark sent tweets requesting others to send Bitcoin payments. Thus, ensuring people to transfer them back twice as much as they granted. Moreover, investigators accused Clark of being the genius behind the most prominent hack in Twitter history. As per the prosecutors, he executed it with help from two teens from Orlando and the UK. The teens from Orlando and the UK also came under the radar for their alleged roles. The two alleged co-participants, Nima Fazeli and Mason Sheppard, along with Clark, managed to swindle over $117,000 worth of Bitcoin from the hack.
Graham Ivan Clark charged with 30 Felony Counts
Graham Ivan Clark managed to receive control of nearly 130 Twitter accounts by compromising a Twitter employee. The hackers were also behind getting the Twitter accounts of crypto platforms. It involved Bitfinex, Gemini and Coinbase, and Tron CEO Justin Sun and Bitcoin.com, as their accounts issued the same message “giving back 5000 BTC to the community”. Moreover, Kucoin, and prominent news outlet CoinDesk, also lost control of their Twitter handles. Tweets were posted from the famous accounts instructing followers to transfer Bitcoin payments to email addresses. Moreover, it resulted in deceiving over $117,000 out of innocent victims in the process.
Prosecutors accused Clark of 30 different felony counts. It involves organized fraud, various counts of communications fraud, fraudulent management of personal information and accessing a computer without authority. During the trial, Clark and his attorney, David Weisbrod, affirmed that they had turned over all of the stolen cryptocurrencies to officials for restitution. Through his probation, Clark has admitted to unannounced, unlimited searches and will grant unlimited access to his electronic devices to those overseeing his probation. It involves Florida law enforcement officials.
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