The Twitter Bitcoin scam allowed hackers to rake in over £80,000/$100,000. Here’s how they got arrested in the US and the UK.
A few weeks ago, we saw about 130 Twitter accounts of several famous people like Elon Musk, Barak Obama, Kim Kardashian, and Bill Gates being hijacked through phone phishing with the attackers asking for Bitcoins in subsequent unauthorized tweets.
The action soon followed with 3 individuals being charged for the hack by the Department of Justice (DOJ) including 1 juvenile. But how did they get caught? Luckily, the DOJ has publicly revealed the court documents which shed light on the entire incident.
To start with, the 3 criminals charged can be identified with their Discord usernames which is essential to understand how the entire scheme worked:
1: 22-year-old Nima Fazeli from Orlando Florida – Rolex#0373
2: 19-year-old Mason John Sheppard from the UK – anxious#001 & Chaewon
3: 17-year-old Graham Ivan Clark from Tampa, Florida – Kirk#5270
In the very beginning, Graham approached both John and Nima on Discord claiming to be working for Twitter as shown in a screenshot below.
Once they were convinced, the latter 2 helped Graham sell access to different Twitter accounts on underground forums with one example being OGUsers (dot) com, a platform known to host such an illegal market.
However, luckily this very marketplace had been hackers behind twitter bitcoin caught
