Twitter Hack: 17 Year Old Teen from Tampa Florida Arrested

Florida man teen has done it again! A 17 year old teen from Tampa (Florida) has been arrested in relation to the ominous July 15th Twitter hack.

FBI and U.S. DOJ determine the culprit

According to multiple reports from local news, Graham Ivan Clark, 17, has been arrested on Friday morning. The arrest came after the FBI and U.S. Department of Justice determined he was behinf the July 15 Twitter Hack.

#BREAKING: Tampa teen arrested for July 15 @Twitter hack that affected accounts belonging to people including @BarackObama, @BillGates & @elonmusk. Suspect is 17, according to @AndrewWarrenFL's Office. Details: https://t.co/nFuMkrLla6

On July 15th, the hacker had access to multiple influential accounts, among which Bill Gates, Barack Obama, Elon Musk, and others. The Twitter hacker solicited Bitcoin from their followers, under the pretense of paying it back double:
“Feeling grateful doubling all payments sent to my BTC address! You send $1,000, I send back $2,000! Only doing this for the next 30 minutes”.
Overall, the teen made more than $100,000 in Bitcoin from the hack until the accounts were restored to their owners.

“I want to congratulate our federal law enforcement partners—the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California, the FBI, the IRS, and the Secret Service—as well as the Florida Department of Law enforcement. They worked quickly to investigate and identify the perpetrator of a sophisticated and extensive fraud”

Under Florida law, teenagers can be prosecuted as adults for financial fraud crimes.

The July 15 Twitter hack aftermath

During the Twitter hack, multiple influential accounts were targeted. This included companies like Uber and Apple. Besides Bill Gates, Obama and Elon Musk, the Bitcoin related hack also affected Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffet, Mike Bloomberg, Kanye West, Floyd Mayweather, etc… Twitter responded by blocking all verified accounts until the situation was back under control.

We are aware of a security incident impacting accounts on Twitter. We are investigating and taking steps to fix it. We will update everyone shortly.

According to a Twitter blog post, the hacker solicited the Bitcoins after gaining access to over 130 accounts by targeting Twitter Employees in a so called “Phone spear phishing attack”. The matter has since been resolved and verified accounts were allowed to post again the following day.

Most accounts should be able to Tweet again. As we continue working on a fix, this functionality may come and go. We're working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible.