17-year-old Twitter Bitcoin hacker pleads innocent

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Last Updated on 5 August 2020 by CryptoTips.eu

Jeroen Kok

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The suspected mastermind of the now infamous July 15 Twitter Bitcoin hack, a 17-year-old American hacker named Graham Ivan Clark, pleaded innocent in a Florida court a few hours ago.

In a brief video conference hearing, the young hacker was told what he was charged with. He heard how the FBI had collected evidence against him and that he had hijacked Twitter accounts of several celebrities. In doing so, he tried to scam people for thousands of dollars in his notorious cryptocurrency scam.

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Clark, Chaewon, and Rolex

Together with his comrades of 19 and 22 years old (the group was known on internet forums as Clark, Chaewon and Rolex) he took over Twitter accounts of Barack Obama, Bill Gates and Kim Kardashian, among others. He asked their millions of followers to enter a give away which doubles the amount of Bitcoin sent. The simple way of operating surprised Silicon Valley and was especially embarrassing for Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey.

Twitter stated that the young group of hackers had “manipulated some of their employees through spearfishing” to gain access to the hacked accounts.

The problem is that Twitter is seen as a serious political medium in the United States and the fact that both former president Barack Obama and presidential candidate Joe Biden could be hacked, but not current president Donald Trump, is embarrassing for the Democrats. Trump has 80 million followers on Twitter. A hack of his account can have very big consequences if the account is used for the wrong purposes.

Minecraft

The life story of the 17-year-old Graham Ivan Clark has become popular for the average American. For instance, the influential New York Times told a long story about him and  also tech media such as Wired and TechCrunch are talking about him for days.

Clark started scams on the famous game Minecraft at the age of 10 (he sold fake usernames and blocked people after payment) and when he was 15 he stole $856k of crypto with another hack.

He took control over the smartphone of a Seattle tech investor named Gregg Bennett via a sim swap hack. The 164 Bitcoins Bennett owned were transferred to Clark’s account within minutes and sold for dollars.

On Instagram, the young hacker invariably showed luxury items he had bought and earned with the crypto hacks and scams. At the time of his arrest, he had more than $3.6 million in BTC in his account at the current Bitcoin price. Enough to pay for a very good lawyer. He might need one.