A former Twitter worker who accessed the confidential information of “customers of curiosity” to the royal household of Saudi Arabia in trade for bribes was sentenced Thursday to 3 and a half years in federal jail.
Ahmad Abouammo, 45, was convicted in August of performing as an unregistered agent of a overseas authorities, worldwide cash laundering and falsification of information in a federal investigation, in line with the U.S. lawyer’s workplace for the Northern District of California. He was acquitted of a number of wire fraud and sincere providers fraud costs.
“This case revealed that overseas governments will bribe insiders to acquire the person info that’s collected and saved by our Silicon Valley social media firms,” U.S. Atty. Stephanie M. Hinds stated in a launch.
Abouammo, previously of Walnut Creek, Calif., and later a Seattle resident, had been employed with Twitter as a media partnerships supervisor for the Center East and North Africa.
Starting in late 2014, he started receiving bribes from a Saudi official in trade for accessing and offering information about Twitter customers who have been dissidents and critics of the nation, officers stated.
Saudi Arabia has handed down decades-long jail sentences over feedback on social media in its crackdown on dissent, drawing widespread backlash over human rights abuses — particularly after Saudi safety brokers in 2018 killed Washington Submit columnist Jamal Khashoggi, who had written critically of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Federal prosecutors stated the Saudi official who met with Abouammo gave him a luxurious Hublot watch in London in December 2014. Abouammo then provided the watch on the market on Craigslist for $42,000.
After the assembly, Abouammo started repeatedly accessing info from Twitter accounts, “at the very least one among which was the account of an influential person who was crucial of members of the Saudi Royal Household and the KSA [Kingdom of Saudi Arabia] authorities,” prosecutors wrote.
The official who met with Abouammo was the “head of a ‘non-public workplace’ of a royal member of the family” who was a minister of state on the time and went on to turn out to be the minister of protection and deputy crown prince, prosecutors stated.
After the assembly in London, Abouammo continued to speak with the Saudi official in regards to the “influential crucial account” and others, in line with the U.S. lawyer’s workplace.
In 2015, a checking account was opened in Lebanon within the title of Abouammo’s father shortly after Abouammo had traveled there. The account then obtained a deposit of $100,000 from the Saudi official.
“Abouammo laundered the cash by sending it into the US in small wire transfers with false descriptions,” prosecutors stated.
One other $100,000 was deposited into the account shortly after Abouammo left Twitter.
When questioned by the FBI in regards to the transactions, Abouammo offered a pretend bill for one of many funds, prosecutors stated.
Abouammo was arrested in November 2019.
“Mr. Abouammo violated the belief positioned on him to guard the privateness of people residing within the U.S. by giving their private info to a overseas energy for revenue,” Assistant Atty. Gen. Matthew G. Olsen of the Justice Division’s Nationwide Safety Division stated within the launch.
