A 17-year-old from Tampa, Florida, has been arrested by the FBI, IRS, US Secret Service, and Florida law enforcement over suspicion of masterminding the biggest security breach in Twitter’s history, The Verge is reporting. Two more individuals have also been charged for the crime in Orlando and the UK.
The massive Twitter hack, that took over the accounts of President Barack Obama, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Kanye West, Apple, and more to perpetrate a huge bitcoin scam, took place on July 15th.
Shortly after the teenager’s arrest in Florida, 22-year-old Nima Fazeli in Orlando and 19-year-old Mason Sheppard in the UK, who go by hacker aliases “Rolex” and “Chaewon” respectively, were formally charged by the US Department of Justice.
Federal agents revealed that both Sheppard and Fazeli had used driver’s licenses to verify themselves with the Binance and Coinbase cryptocurrency exchanges.
Fazeli is facing 5 years in prison and a $250,000 fine for one count of computer intrusion. Shepard is being charged with computer intrusion, wire fraud conspiracy and money laundering conspiracy, the most serious of which comes with a 20-year sentence and a $250,000 fine in the US.
According to Hillsborough State Attorney Andrew Warren, the 17-year-old Tampa teen is currently in jail and being charged with over 30 felony counts, including organized fraud, communications fraud, identity theft, and hacking.
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