Security News > 2022 > December > Twitter staffer turned Saudi spy jailed for 3.5 years

At the time, Abouammo was facing up to 20 years behind bars for, while working for Twitter in the US, leaking to Saudi Arabia sensitive information about 6,000 Twitter accounts that could be used to identify and locate users who were of interest to the Saudi royals.

Instead, a judge this week sentenced Abouammo to 42 months in federal prison followed by three years of supervised release.

According to the criminal complaint [PDF] filed in 2019, Abouammo, who worked at Twitter in its San Francisco HQ from 2013 to 2015, started receiving bribes from Saudi officials as early as December 2014 in exchange for info on its users.

In December 2014, Abouammo met in London with the head of the "Private office" of a Saudi Arabia royal family member who, during the relevant time, was a minister of state and then became the minister of defense and deputy crown prince, according to the Feds.

At the meeting, the Saudi official gave Abouammo the expensive watch, valued at $42,000 according to Abouammo, and he later tried to sell it on Craigslist.

Evidence presented at trial showed that Abouammo traveled to Lebanon in February 2015, opened a bank account there in his father's name, it received a $100,000 deposit from an account in from Saudi Arabia, and then another $100,000 after he left Twitter in May 2015.

News URL

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2022/12/16/twitter_saudi_spy_sentenced/