17 Year Old Tampa Teen Among 3 People Charged With 30 Counts For Recent Twitter Hack

Update 7/31/2020 1520ET: The Department of Justice has also noted that 2 additional individuals have been charged, including a 19 year old from the UK and a 22 year old from Orlando, Florida, according to Bloomberg:

*DOJ: THREE CHARGED FOR ALLEGED ROLES IN TWITTER HACK
*DOJ: 19-YEAR-OLD FROM UK, 22-YEAR-OLD FROM ORLANDO CHARGED
*DOJ: 3RD INDIVIDUAL IS JUVENILE WHO WON’T BE FURTHER IDENTIFIED

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Before Democrats even had time to blame the Twitter hack on Russians and meddling in the upcoming election, a 17 year old from Tampa has stolen their thunder. 

The teenager, 17-year-old Graham Clark, is being hailed as the “mastermind” behind the hack that rocked Twitter weeks ago, when major celebrity accounts like Bill Gates and Barack Obama were hacked and then used to request Bitcoin from their followers.

Unfortunately for Democrats, Clark’s name doesn’t even sound Russian.

Regardless, Hillsborough State Attorney Andrew Warren filed 30 felony charges against Clark this week for “scamming people across America” in connection with the hack, according to NBC Tampa.

Clark is facing “one count of organized fraud, 17 counts of communications fraud, one count of fraudulent use of personal information with over $100,000 or 30 or more victims, 10 counts of fraudulent use of personal information and one count of access to computer or electronic device without authority.”

He was booked into jail at about 6:30am Friday morning. The state attorney’s office said: “As a cryptocurrency, Bitcoin is difficult to track and recover if stolen in a scam. These crimes were perpetrated using the names of famous people and celebrities, but they’re not the primary victims here. 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.”

Clark was found after a “complex nationwide” investigation. Warren concluded: “I want to congratulate our federal law enforcement partners – the US Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California, the FBI, the IRS, and the Secret Service – as well as the Florida Department of Law enforcement. They worked quickly to investigate and identify the perpetrator of a sophisticated and extensive fraud.”

“This defendant lives here in Tampa” and “he committed the crime here,” Warren stated. You can watch the state attorney general’s press conference here:

Recall, just moments ago we noted that Twitter had blamed the hack on “spear-phishing”, which is a targeted attack to trick people into simply handing out their passwords. 

Twitter staff were targeted through their phones, according to a new report from the BBC. The attacks then allowed hackers the ability to Tweet from celebrity Twitter accounts. Twitter has said it was “taking a hard look” at how it could improve its permissions and processes.

“The attack on July 15, 2020, targeted a small number of employees through a phone spear phishing attack. This attack relied on a significant and concerted attempt to mislead certain employees and exploit human vulnerabilities to gain access to our internal systems,” Twitter wrote on Wednesday.

We had also reported about two weeks ago that the FBI had launched an official inquiry into the massive security breach. For the full details on the hack, you can read our report on it here. 

We only have one question left: where is the more than $100,000 in Bitcoin he received? 

We would guess probably in his Robinhood account, invested in Tesla call options.