The US Department of Justice has today charged three persons in relation to Twitter’s high-profile accounts hack that happened last month. Two of the three persons include teens from Florida and Bognor Regis and are arrested over several felonies. They have reportedly stolen over $120,000 worth of Bitcoin in their campaign.
Three People Charged in Relation to Twitter Hack
A 19-year old named Mason Sheppard from Bognor Regis, England faces three charges from the US Department of Justice. Also called as “Chaewon”, he was charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering, wire fraud and the intentional access of a protected computer in the Twitter’s high-profile accounts hack happened last month.
Further, a 17-year old teen named Graham Ivan Clark from Tampa, Florida was also charged with counts on organized fraud, identity theft, communications fraud, and hacking. Alongside, another conspirator of this gang, Nima Fazeli aged 22 from Orlando, Florida has also been charged with this incident.
The department of Justice may bring Clarke to court as early as tomorrow for testifying about the hack. Though he’s a teenager living alone in an apartment, he’s considered as an adult to face the criminal charges by the Department of Justice. Meanwhile, Twitter thanked law enforcement for acting swiftly on the incident.
The group was alleged for hacking into the accounts of high-profile candidates like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Barack Obama, Kanye West, Kim Kardashian Warren Buffett, and institutional accounts like Apple, Uber, Bitcoin, Coinbase, Binance and Gemini to craft a fake Bitcoin campaign. They had tweeted for 45 of the total 130 accounts breached, asking for Bitcoins in a double giveaway scam.
The attempt was successful, as they had received over $120,000 of Bitcoins to their address as per reports. Twitter has later explained the incident a few of their employees were targeted by a phone spear-phishing attack to steal credentials for accessing Twitter’s account management tools.
