For most 17-year olds, it’s the beginning of new milestones after graduating school but this was not the case for 17-year-old student Graham Clark, who found entertainment in hacking Twitter and whose milestone will be in jail.
Clark was arrested on July 31st charged with hacking into Twitter servers, attempting to hijack high profilers accounts (Bill Gates, Kayne West and Obama). He allegedly used emails duplicated as legitimate ones to fool recipients into revealing sensitive information, using bitcoin to launder money into his account. 130 twitter accounts were targeted, tweeting successfully from 45 accounts with security having seized $700, 000 worth of bitcoin expenses. As a result, Clark is being trialled as an adult, facing 30 penalty charges at Hillsborough County jail for organised and communications fraud, conspiracy to commit fraud and money laundering and many more.
It was reported that Clark had a past of exploiting his computing speciality from the age of 13, scamming players over Minecraft for money, using the money laundering tactics used to aid his Twitter mastermind. Colby Meeds- a 19-year-old Minecraft player claimed that Clark had stolen $50 from him over Minecraft by offering to send him a digital cape which he did not deliver.
The prosecutor in charge of Clark’s case branded him as ‘no ordinary 17-year-old’ with the crime at first being under the assumption of the job of professionals. Still, despite Clark being the ringleader of the crime, he had help from 19* Mason Sheppard from the UK and 22* Nima Fazeli from Orlando, have been charged as accomplices. Sheppard is charged with conspiracy to commit fraud and money laundering, while Fazeli is charged with aiding and abetting intentional access to a protected computer.
Despite this, what was a perfectly planned out crime became quickly flawed, leaving suggestive hints regarding their identities that were traced back to Clark, praising Federal Law enforcement for their conclusive investigation.
