A Florida teenager has pleaded guilty to fraud charges after coordinating the hack of high-profile Twitter accounts to run a cryptocurrency scam that collected roughly $120,000 worth of bitcoins.
Graham Ivan Clark was charged last year as an adult in July 2020, he turned 18 in January 2021, as the first suspect and the one who orchestrated last year's Twitter hack.
He was arrested following an operation coordinated by the FBI, the IRS, and the Secret Service (court documents available here).
The other individuals indicted for their involvement in the attack are Mason Sheppard (Chaewon) from Bognor Regis, United Kingdom, and Nima Fazeli (Rolex) from Orlando, Florida. (criminal complaints available here and here).
Graham Clark at March 16 hearing
Twitter said that Clark and the other attackers took control of high-profile accounts after stealing Twitter employees' credentials after a successful phone spear-phishing attack on July 15, 2020.
Using credentials of Twitter employees with access to internal support tools, they targeted 130 high-profile accounts, accessing the direct messages of 36 (including the inbox of Dutch Member of House of Representatives Geert Wilders), eventually downloading the Twitter Data for seven accounts.
He also sold access to those accounts and, later, used the high-profile and verified Twitter accounts to run a cryptocurrency scam on the social network ..
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