Young man who hacked Twitter in 2020 gets three years in prison and is forced to give up his social networks

The 18-year-old American cybercriminal, who shocked the world in July last year, by hacking into Twitter’s internal systems through phone phishing scams and with that accessed the account of several public figures and celebrities and still offered Bitcoin fraud schemes on behalf of the victims, pleaded guilty and accepted his arrest this Tuesday (16).

The responsible authorities said that Graham Ivan Clack, 18 years old (17 years old when he committed the crimes), was charged with 30 crimes, being the mastermind of a Bitcoin fraud scheme, responsible for stealing about $ 117,000, along with two other young people: the 19-year-old Briton, Mason John Sheppard and the 22-year-old American, Nima Fazeli.

According to the Tampa Bay Times, Graham faces 3 years in prison as a “young offender”, in a prison dedicated to young adults and 3 more years of alternative punishment, as in a military-style training ground, for example. Furthermore, is prohibited from accessing a computer without supervision and was forced to offer his passwords from all social networks, to collaborate with the investigation.

Graham was detained by the police in their own home, days after accessing the verified account of several personalities with millions of followers on twitter, as the current US President Joe Biden; the former president Barack Obara; Elon Musk; Kanye West; bill Gates; Jeff Bezos; Mike Bloomberg; Warren Buffet; Floyd Mayweather; Kim Kardashiam in addition to the official account of Apple and Uber.

With access to the accounts, the young man published a message similar to this:

“We are giving back to our community. We support Bitcoins and we believe you should too! All Bitcoins sent to our address below will be returned in double! Continuing only for the next 30 minutes.”

According to a Twitter statement on the case, cybercriminals accessed 130 accounts, posted messages offering Bitcoin fraud schemes for 45, accessed the 36 private messages and downloaded Twitter data from 7.

The local police believe that he convinced an employee who worked in the technology department of Twitter to gain access to accounts. His lawyer, David Weisbrod, guarantees that all the money stolen has been returned.

Sources: Tampa Bay Times; The Hack.