A teenager from Tampa Bay has been accused of being the mastermind of the recent Twitter hacks of several high-profile accounts, including Barack Obama, Elon Musk, Kanye West and more.
17-year-old Graham Ivan Clark from Tampa Bay was arrested yesterday (July 31) by the FBI, IRS, US Secret Service and Florida law enforcement. He is currently in jail and will be charged with over 30 felony counts, including organised fraud, communications fraud, hacking and identity theft.
According to The Verge, two more individuals have also been formally charged by the US Department of Justice – 22-year-old Nima Fazeli in Orlando and 19-year-old Mason Sheppard in the UK, who go by the hacker aliases “Rolex” and “Chaewon” respectively.
As reported by The Tampa Bay Times, Clark was arrested in his home in Greater Northdale and will be tried in Hillsborough County. While he is currently a juvenile, Clark will be prosecuted as an adult.
In a live-streamed press conference, Hillsborough State Attorney Andrew Warren claimed Clark acquired access to Twitter’s internal tools by convincing a Twitter employee he worked in Twitter’s IT department. Warren also noted Clark’s hack reaped over $100,000 in Bitcoin in just one day.
“These crimes were perpetrated using the names of famous people and celebrities, but they’re not the primary victims here,” Warren said.
“This ‘Bit-Con’ was designed to steal money from regular Americans from all over the country, including here in Florida. This massive fraud was orchestrated right here in our backyard, and we will not stand for that.”
