The Mastermind Has Been Caught

A 17-year old teen from Tampa, Florida was arrested on Friday for the July 15th Twitter hack that attacked the accounts of well-known figures, like Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and others.

What Happened Exactly?

During the hack, many well-known celebrities had their accounts tweeting out the same message about sending in money for Bitcoin. Graham Ivan Clark, the teen in custody, was arrested as the “mastermind” of the whole thing. Over the course of one day, he reportedly got more than $100,000.

The hack began on May 3rd, according to the documents released on the matter. Clark is from Tampa, but lived in California, and he gained access to a portion of Twitter’s network.

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As reported by the Tampa Bay Times, Andrew Warren, Florida State Attorney, said the crime was a “highly sophisticated attack on a magnitude not seen before.”

Warren described how Clark was able to pull off the massive scam:

“He gained access to Twitter accounts and to the internal controls of Twitter through compromising a Twitter employee. He sold access to those accounts. He then used the identities of prominent people to solicit money in the form of bitcoin, promising in return that he would send back twice as much bitcoin.”

Twitter confirmed, last week, confirmed that 130 total accounts were targeted. The attackers successfully tweeted from 45 of those accounts, accessed the private messages of 36, and downloaded the Twitter data of seven of them.

The Consequences

Clark is now facing 30 charges, including one count of organized fraud of more than $50,000, 17 counts of felony communications fraud, one count of aggravated identity theft, 10 counts of identity theft, and one count of hacking and unlawful access to a computer in furtherance of a scheme to defraud.

long with Clark, two others were charged in the hack: 22-year-old, Nima Fazeli, and 19-year-old, Mason Sheppard.

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