A Tampa teenager boy named Graham Clark has been arrested in the recent Twitter ‘Bitcoin’ hack. The accused has been put in jail for being the ‘mastermind’ behind the hacking of Twitter accounts of high profile personalities like Barak Obama, Bill Gates, Kanye West, and others.
The information has come from jail records and the office of the Hillsborough State Attorney, Andrew Warren. Warren has filed 30 felony charges against the teenage boy this week. It has been done in connection with the Twitter hack that took place on July 15, 2020. He has been accused of scamming people across America.
Graham Clark: Tampa Teen Arrested In ‘Bitcoin’ Hack Of Twitter Accounts
Clark is facing the following charges:
- 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.
According to the Hillsborough County Jail records, Graham Clark was arrested and booked into jail after 6:30 am on Friday.
The office of Warren stated that Graham Clark had designed a defraud scheme. It was to ‘stole the identities of prominent people’ and ‘posting messages in their names directing victims to send Bitcoin’ to accounts linked to the Tampa teen. The state attorney added that with the scheme’s help, the boy earned more than $100,000 in Bitcoin in just one day.
It’s already known that Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency and is challenging to track and recover if stolen in a scam. Warren’s office said the same.
Some of the names who were impacted by the hack include former president Barack Obama, presidential candidate Joe Biden, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, and SpaceX & Tesla CEO Elon Musk among others. According to Twitter, the high-profile hack limited access to their internal tools.
“These crimes were perpetrated using the names of famous people and celebrities, but they’re not the primary victims here. This ‘Bit-Con’ was designed to steal money from regular Americans from all over the country, including here in Florida,” Warren said in a statement. “This massive fraud was orchestrated right here in our backyard, and we will not stand for that.”
The state attorney’s office mentioned that the FBI and US Department of Justice found the suspect in Hillsborough County after a complex nationwide investigation.
The US Attorney’s Office in the Northern District of California said that there are three alleged people behind the Twitter hack, and Graham Clark is just one of them. The two other suspects are 22-year-old Nima Fazeli, aka Rolex of Orlando, and 19-year-old Mason Sheppard, aka Chaewon of the UK.
“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 sophisticated and extensive fraud,” State Attorney Warren said in his statement.
Graham Clark will be prosecuted in Hillsborough County as he lives in Tampa as well as he committed the crime there only.
After the suspect was arrested, Twitter officially released a statement thanking the law enforcement for their work.
“We appreciate law enforcement’s swift actions in this investigation and will continue to cooperate as the case progresses,” the company said. “For our part, we are focused on being transparent and providing updates regularly.”
After the hack, the White House officials were highly concerned about the Twitter account of President Donald Trump as he uses it on a daily basis for pushing out daily news and other information.
Later on, they assured the public that Trump’s account has got extra protection.
The Chief Financial Officer of Florida also expressed his concern as such hacks could target its economy and manipulate elections. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement was called on to investigate the case.
