.Graham Ivan Clark, the XNUMX-year-old from Tampa responsible for hijacking several high-profile accounts last year and using them to demand BTC payments, was sentenced to three years in prison following a plea deal.
A very supervised release
According to documents filed March 15 in a Hillsborough court, Clark agreed to plead guilty. The young man has been charged with financial fraud in exchange for three years of imprisonment and three years of probation.
Clark will therefore be able to serve some of his sentences in a training camp, reported the Tampa Bay Times. In particular, the terms of the plea deal allow Clark to be convicted as a "juvenile delinquent". This simply means that he cannot serve a sentence of more than 6 years.
However, he will not be allowed to use a computer without being supervised by Florida probation officers. He will also voluntarily provide passwords for all accounts under his control, as well as allow the police to conduct unlimited searches of his property.
During the hearing that took place a few hours ago, Clark and his lawyer revealed that all the acquired BTC had been handed over to the authorities in order to compensate the victims of his scam.
An "almost" perfect scam
The Twitter community was caught off guard last July after more than 130 profiles belonging to famous celebrities, companies and politicians including Elon Musk, Joe Biden, Uber, Apple, Kanye West, Wiz Khalifa, Barack Obama, Warren Buffett among the others have sent peculiar messages.
Specifically, hacked accounts were used to send tweets soliciting to invest in BTC, with the false promise to double the investment of bitcoins sent.
Posing as Barack Obama, the offender wrote: “I am returning money to my community because of COVID-19 !. All Bitcoins sent to my address below will be doubled. If you send $ 1.000, I'll give you $ 2.000 back! "
Just think that the massive Clark-orchestrated scam was able to raise nearly $ 120.000 worth of bitcoin in the first three hours it was posted.
Fortunately, Graham Ivan Clark was arrested a few days later at his home in Florida. Two men, Nima Fazeli of the United States and Mason Sheppard of the United Kingdom, were appointed by prosecutors as co-conspirators. The two are facing federal charges related to the phishing scam.
Have you ever been the victim of online scams? This is why we always advise our users to check the investment method they use to spend their money.
Unfortunately, although the internet is a place full of investment opportunities and sometimes well controlled, the possibility of being scammed by some "bontempone" is always around the corner.
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