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Graham Ivan Clark, the 18-year-old behind the July 15th, 2020 Twitter hack asking for bitcoin, has been sentenced to 3 years in prison.
This was revealed by the Tampa Bay Times, which also states that Clark pleaded guilty to fraud by agreeing to serve three years in prison, followed by three years of probation.
The Tampa teenager had taken control of several well-known Twitter accounts, using them to ask for BTC, and collecting more than $117,000 in the process.
The deal allowed Clark to be sentenced as a “youthful offender”, as he was a minor at the time of the crime, thus avoiding the 10-year minimum sentence if he were sentenced as an adult instead.
His defence lawyer, David Weisbrod, also revealed that Clark has handed over to the authorities all the cryptocurrencies he acquired through the hack.
In addition, Clark will not be allowed to use computers without the permission and supervision of law enforcement, will have to submit to searches of his property and surrender the passwords to all accounts he controls.
Bitcoin Twitter Hack, Clark’s mistakes
In this particular case, it was very easy for law enforcement to trace the organizer of this scam, as after receiving approximately 12.9 BTC, he sent it to an exchange to sell.
The exchange alerted law enforcement as soon as it received BTC from the public address used to receive the funds, as this was known to all, triggering almost immediate law enforcement action.
In short, Clark made a trivial mistake and was easily discovered by law enforcement, considering that when you publicly reveal your public Bitcoin address, you also reveal all on-chain transactions related to it.
In addition, there are now several on-chain analysis techniques that allow transactions to be tracked, which is very useful in these kinds of investigations.