A Florida teenager who was accused of being the "mastermind" behind a July 2020 Twitter hack that affected Apple has agreed to a plea deal that will see him spending three years in prison, according to the Tampa Bay Times.
Graham Ivan Clark, alongside others, compromised the Twitter accounts of 130 prominent companies and individuals to solicit Bitcoin, scamming people out of more than $100,000. Apple's official account was accessed, as were the accounts of Tesla CEO Elon Musk, former U.S. President Barack Obama, former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, and President Joe Biden.
Clark this week will plead guilty to state charges in exchange for three years in prison and three years probation. Because Clark was just 17 at the time of the attack, he will be sentenced as a "youthful offender" and could be eligible to serve some of his time in a military-style boot camp.
Under the terms of the plea deal, Clark is not allowed to use computers without permission and supervision from law enforcement.
Twitter did an internal investigation after the breach and found that hackers targeted employees in a "phone spear phishing attack," tricking them into thinking they were speaking to other Twitter employees to gain access to Twitter's internal tools.
Mason "Chaewon" Sheppard from the UK and Nima "Rolex" Fazeli have also been charged in the attack and are facing prison time.
