An 18-year-old hacker who took a massive hit in 2020, infiltrating several high-profile Twitter accounts to request bitcoin transactions, agreed to serve three years in prison for his actions.
Graham Ivan Clark, from Florida, was 17 at the time of the hack in July, during which he took on several important accounts, including those of Joe Biden, Bill Gates and Kim Kardashian West.
After accessing them, Clark tweeted a link to a bitcoin address and wrote “all bitcoins sent to our address below will be returned in double!” According to court documents, Clark earned more than $ 100,000 from the scheme, which his lawyers say he has already returned.
Clark was able to access the accounts after convincing a Twitter employee that he worked in the company’s information technology department, according to the Tampa Bay Times.
The incident represented a major security breach for the social network, which was forced to suspend tweets from all verified accounts for several hours while working to protect the platform. Clark, who was in his senior year at the time, was arrested several days later.
As part of a deal, Clark pleaded guilty to organized fraud – which leads to a maximum of 30 years in prison. He was sentenced as a “young offender” and will serve three years in prison for young adults, followed by three years of probation, according to the Times.
He may qualify to serve part of his time in a “training camp”, an alternative to prison for young offenders. During that time, he will not be able to access electronic devices without supervision or use social networks. The time he spent in prison awaiting trial in the past eight months will be applied as a term of service.
“Graham Clark needs to be held responsible for this crime, and other potential scammers need to see the consequences,” said Andrew Warren, the Hillsborough state attorney, in a statement, according to the Tampa Bay Times. “In that case, we were able to deliver these consequences by recognizing that our goal with any child, whenever possible, is to make them learn the lesson without destroying their future.”
Two other young men were also charged with the hack – Mason Sheppard, from the United Kingdom, and Nima Fazeli, from Orlando. Their cases continued in progress.