The hacker behind last year’s big Twitter hack has just been sentenced to hard time.
Graham Ivan Clark, the teenage hacker who broke into Twitter’s systems, took over verified accounts, and used them to scam users out of Bitcoin, was sentenced to three years in prison, according to the Tampa Bay Times.
Clark’s hack took the internet by storm in the summer of 2020. On July 15, verified Twitter accounts belonging to users such as Barack Obama, Elon Musk, Kanye West, and Joe Biden as well as accounts belonging to companies like Apple and Uber were compromised. The accounts began tweeting out a popular Bitcoin scam, an offer to double the amount of Bitcoin that anyone sent to a particular Bitcoin address included in the posts.
Clark was able to scam the equivalent of more than $100,000 worth of Bitcoin at the time before Twitter shut the hack down.
Cryptocurrency scams are not new on Twitter, although this was a whole new level. Usually, fake accounts posing as celebrities try to convince users to send money to anonymous Bitcoin addresses with the promise of making money. This scam was being carried out via celebrities’ actual accounts.
(Note: You should never send Bitcoin or really any type of currency to anyone you don’t know online. These transactions can often be irreversible, leaving victims with little-to-no recourse to recuperate their stolen funds.)
Three years may seem like a lot of prison time for a hack but when you consider that the 18-year-old hacker reached a plea deal with prosecutors which helped Clark avoid a minimum 10-year sentence, perhaps it doesn’t seem that long.
Clark, who was 17-years-old at the time of the hack, was sentenced as a “youthful offender” under the arrangement. Along with avoiding the minimum sentence for adults, the hacker will be able to serve out his time in a prison specifically for young adults. Clark may also be able to serve a portion of the sentence in a “military-style boot camp.” After he serves out his sentence, Clark will also serve three years of probation. Violating that probation will result in the reinstatement of the minimum 10-year sentence.
In addition to serving time, the Tampa Bay Times reports that Clark will not be able to use computers without supervision, and will be forced to turn over login credentials for accounts that he owns. David Weisbrod, Clark’s defense attorney, said that the teen turned over all of the cryptocurrency he had scammed in the hack.
The teen was arrested and charged in late July for the hack. While Clark is widely viewed as the “mastermind” behind the hack, two accomplices he met on a social media marketplace forum called OGUsers who helped him carry out the scheme have also been hit with federal charges.