Florida Teen Arrested For Massive Twitter Hack

A 17-year-old from Tampa is at the center of a Twitter hack scheme which gave him and two others access to the high-profile accounts of Bill Gates, Barack Obama and many other celebrities with millions of followers, authorities say.

The Tampa Bay Times reports Graham Ivan Clark was arrested Friday at his home in Greater Northdale, according to the Hillsborough State Attorney’s Office. The two others charged Friday are 22-year-old Nima Fazeli of Orlando and 19-year-old Mason Sheppard of the United Kingdom, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in California.

Graham Clark

Clark faces state charges and will be tried in Hillsborough County because he is a juvenile, federal authorities said. The other two men face federal charges in the Northern District of California.

“He’s a 17 year-old kid who apparently just graduated high school,” said State Attorney Andrew Warren of Clark during a Friday news conference. “But no make no mistake, this was not an ordinary 17-year-old. This was a highly sophisticated attack on a magnitude not seen before.”

The Secret Service seized more than $700,000 of Bitcoin from Clark in April, according to the New York Times. Then came the July 15 hack, which authorities said Clark was the “mastermind” behind.

Clark’s scheme was to steal the identities of prominent people, then post messages in their names directing victims to send Bitcoin to accounts he owned. The accounts received more than 400 transfers and he reaped more than $100,000 in Bitcoin in just one day, the state attorney’s office said Friday.

As a cryptocurrency, Bitcoin is difficult to track and recover if stolen in a scam.

“This defendant lives here in Tampa, he committed the crime here, and he’ll be prosecuted here,” Warren said in an online news conference.

The hacking took place on July 15. At the time, Twitter said it was a “coordinated” attack targeting its employees “with access to internal systems and tools.”