A Florida teenager Graham Ivan Clark who hacked the Twitter accounts of Kim Kardashian, Kanye West and former U.S. President Barack Obama as part of a cryptocurrency scam has been sentenced to three years in prison.
Graham Ivan Clark also briefly took over the social media profiles of tech billionaires Elon Musk, Bill Gates, and Jeff Bezos, as well as then-presidential nominee Joe Biden last July (20), calling on followers to send payments in Bitcoin, which would be doubled and sent back as part of the celebrities’ bid to give back to the community amid the COVID crisis.
Graham Ivan Clark, then-17-year-old, ended up collecting up to $117,000 (£84,200) from the ploy, but he was soon tracked down by authorities and held in custody, and on Tuesday (16Mar21), he pleaded guilty to 30 counts of communications fraud and other felony crimes, reports the Tampa Bay Times.
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Graham Ivan Clark surrendered the Bitcoin funds to officials, and as part of a plea deal, was ordered to spend three years in a juvenile detention centre – minus time served, as well as three years on probation.
The sentence is the maximum allowed as Clark, who masterminded the whole scam, was a minor at the time of the crimes.
Two other suspects, Orlando resident Nima Fazeli and British man Mason Sheppard, were also arrested and charged last year in connection to the hacking spree. (MT/TWR/LOT)
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