A former Twitter worker has been pronounced in charge for his position in digging up personal knowledge referring to positive Twitter customers and turning over that knowledge to Saudi Arabia.
Ahmad Abouammo, 44, used to be convicted through a jury after a two-week trial in San Francisco federal court docket, Bloomberg reported Tuesday. He faces as much as twenty years in jail when sentenced.
The verdict comes just about 3 years after Abouammo, at the side of Ali Alzabarah and Ahmed Almutairi (Ahmed Aljbreen) had been indicted in 2019 for performing as “unlawful brokers” of Saudi Arabia, with the previous additionally charged with destroying, changing, and falsifying information in a federal investigation.
Prosecutors accused Abouammo and Alzabarah, either one of whom joined Twitter in 2013, of being enlisted through officers of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for unmasking its critics at the social media platform.
In line with court docket paperwork, each people leveraged their get right of entry to to interior techniques to unauthorizedly pay money for nonpublic details about customers of explicit accounts that had been crucial of the regime.
This knowledge encompassing e mail addresses, telephone numbers, IP addresses, and dates of delivery, had been then passed over to the officers in go back for which Abouammo won $300,000 in money and a Hublot Unico Large Bang King Gold Ceramic watch valued at $40,000.
Moreover, in an try to obstruct the probe, Abouammo is mentioned to have lied to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) brokers when faced at his Seattle house in October 2018, announcing the watch used to be “junky” and simply value $500, along with offering a falsified bill about handiest receiving a $100,000 twine for consulting and media technique paintings.
Whilst Alzabarah sought the help of Almutairi to escape the U.S. in December 2015 and break out the trial, Abouammo used to be arrested on November 5, 2019.
“Those people are charged with focused on and acquiring personal knowledge from dissidents and identified critics, below the route and keep an eye on of the federal government of Saudi Arabia,” FBI Particular Agent in Fee, John F. Bennett, mentioned on the time. “Insider threats pose a crucial risk to American companies and our nationwide safety.”