Officials said the Florida teenager hacked Twitter accounts of several celebrities last summer.
18-year-old Graham Evan Clarke pleaded guilty to 30 counts of communication fraud and other state crimes for dodging social media platforms to carry out the cryptocurrency scandal.
Clarke filed the petition on Tuesday in a virtual court hearing from Florida’s Hillsborough County Jail, where he had been held since his arrest last summer at the age of 17. Tampa Bay Times reported.
Prosecutors say Clarke sold more than $ 117,000 worth of bitcoins after handling the Twitter accounts of several high-profile figures, including Bill Gates, Barack Obama, Kanye West and Elon Musk. He posted tweets that directed the victims of the plan to send the cryptocurrency to a digital account.
Hillsborough State Attorney Andrew Warren Said in a statement. “Graham Clarke should be held accountable for that crime, and other potential scammers need to see the outcome.”
According to the Tampa Bay Times, Clarke’s defense attorney David Weisserbod said the teen hacker had replaced all bitcoins. Officers are expected to return the money to its rightful owners.
According to Warren, Clarke has spent three years in a juvenile detention facility – seven and a half months in which she is already locked up – and another three years on probation.
Authorities said the maximum punishment he would serve is as a young offender, a position that would also provide him with education and transition services to regain his life after coming out of prison.
Prosecutors said Clark would face up to 10 years in jail time in an adult lockup if he violates his investigation.
The unprecedented breach that Clarke committed last July surprised Twitter users and forced the platform to stop posting verified users while investigating what happened.
Two other men – UK’s Mason Shepard and Florida’s Nima Fazli – have been separately charged in federal court for their roles in the plan, which Twitter called a “coordinated social engineering attack” with access to internal devices from the company. Targets employees of.
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