The protagonist of the most famous hack in the history of Twitter has been sentenced to spend 3 years in prison, the 17-year-old teenager has had attempted to steal Bitcoins using celebrity accounts.
Many of us were surprised when we have discovered that the 2020 Twitter hack, one of the most famous hacks in the history of social networks, was executed by a teenager. This attack was carried out by Graham Ivan Clark, 17 years old at the time of his arrest. He has now been sentenced to 3 years in prison as he turned 18 years old.
The teenager who hacked Twitter sentenced to 3 years in prison
Clark pleaded guilty to the Twitter hack that sought to carry out Bitcoin scams through accounts of personalities such as Elon Musk, Tim Cook, or Barack Obama. Last year, in 2020, the teenage hacker was arrested and a plea deal was reached today.
According to some sources Clark is already credited with up to 229 days served since his arrest in the summer of 2020. Clark reached a deal with the justice system. This way he would be tried as a juvenile offender in order to reduce his sentence and open the possibility that he could serve part of the sentence in a reform school.
The teenager has hacked Twitter to steal Bitcoin from celebrities
The hack took place on July 15 last year. A multitude of accounts belonging to famous people of the social network began to publish tweets in which they claimed that, if they received a Bitcoin donation, they would return the donation multiplied. This was obviously a scam.
Given the fact that these accounts were very important, the scam was successful. According to Clark himself, he went on to receive more than $100,000 in cryptocurrency. No wonder; he even affected profiles linked to US politics, such as Barack Obama or Joe Biden, the current President of the United States.
Clark was not alone; he carried out the hack together with two collaborators he met in a forum for selling usernames, OGusers. The operation was simple; they gained access to Twitter’s internal toolset and Twitter’s customer service portal.
He did this by convincing an employee who worked in the company’s IT department. This allowed him to take control of the accounts of these people and send tweets requesting Bitcoin. After the hack, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey announced that he was taking internal measures to address the issue.
It wasn’t long before Clark was arrested at his home in Hillsborough, Florida. Nima Fazeli and Mason Sheppard were also charged with federal crimes, his two co-workers, both in Orlando and the United Kingdom, respectively. Thanks to the plea agreement, Clark would have avoided a much longer sentence of 10 years, which will be served if Clark violates his probation.
Clark will spend the remainder of his sentence in a U.S. state prison intended for young adults. Clark’s attorney, David Weisbrod, has confirmed that all of the Bitcoin and cryptocurrency he once received through the scam has been returned.
