Aug. 5 (UPI) — A Florida teenager accused of participating in a massive hack of more than 100 high-profile Twitter accounts as part of a cryptocurrency scam has pleaded not guilty to all charges.
Graham Ivan Clark, 17, entered his not guilty plea to 30 charges on Tuesday in a Hillsborough Circuit Court and was scheduled for a bail hearing on Wednesday, according to court records.
Clark was indicted on a slew of fraud charges last week, accused of illegally gaining access to the Twitter accounts of Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Kanye West, former President Barack Obama and others as part of a scam to use them to publish tweets in mid-July asking people to transfer bitcoin to an account promising to return double any amount received to the donor.
Prosecutors said more than $100,000 in the cryptocurrency was sent from some 400 accounts in one day.
Mason Sheppard, 19, of Bognor Regis, in England, and Nima Fazeli, of Orlando, were also charged last week in connection to the July 15 hack.
According to their indictments, Sheppard was charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to commit money laundering and the intentional access of a protected computer, while Fazeli was charged with aiding and abetting the intentional access of a protected computer.
Court documents state the accused gained access to the high-profile Twitter accounts through a coordinated social-engineering attack targeting the accounts of employees at the tech company.
