Security News > 2020 > August > Tampa Teenager Accused in Twitter Hack Pleads Not Guilty
A Florida teen identified as the mastermind of a scheme that gained control of Twitter accounts of prominent politicians, celebrities and technology moguls pleaded not guilty on Tuesday to multiple counts of fraud.
Graham Ivan Clark, 17, is accused of using the hijacked Twitter accounts to scam people around the world out of more than $100,000 in Bitcoin.
Court papers in the California cases say Fazeli and Sheppard brokered the sale of Twitter accounts stolen by a hacker who identified himself as "Kirk," and said he could "Reset, swap and control any Twitter account at will" in exchange for cybercurrency payments, claiming to be a Twitter employee.
Twitter has said the hacker gained access to a company dashboard that manages accounts by using social engineering and spear-phishing smartphones to obtain credentials from "a small number" of Twitter employees "To gain access to our internal systems." Spear-phishing uses email or other messaging to deceive people into sharing access credentials.
Clark is represented by Tampa attorney David Weisbrod.