Boy from Bognor faces 45 years’ jail for Twitter hack
A BRITISH teenager is accused of helping to launch a massive cyber attack that hacked the Twitter accounts of top celebrities and politicians – from his mother’s terraced house in Bognor Regis.
Mason Sheppard, 19, is facing up to 45 years in jail in the US after prosecutors said he was involved in a plot to steal tens of thousands of pounds by hacking the accounts of VIPs including Barack Obama, Bill Gates, Elon Musk and Kim Kardashian.
The scam, which almost brought Twitter to its knees last month, saw dozens of VIPs, including US presidential candidate Joe Biden, appear to send tweets urging their millions of followers to send them virtual Bitcoin currency, with the false promise that they would get double the value back in return.
The hackers managed to raise around £76,000 from the scam before Twitter locked down many of its VIP accounts, according to US officials.
It was the largest cyber attack on Twitter in its 14-year history.
US prosecutors allege that Sheppard, using the online aliases ‘Chaewon’ and ‘ever so anxious’, acted as a broker on hacker community forums, selling access to Twitter accounts, which had been compromised by his co- conspirators. He allegedly told buyers that he could give them access to accounts for £2,000 t o £ 3,000, plus a £ 200 commission for himself.
Twitter said that the hackers had accessed the private messages of 36 accounts. Some accounts had all their data downloaded. Criminal charges filed in California claim t h a t S h e p p a r d was unmasked as the holder of two cryptocurrency accounts where more than £30,000 worth of Bitcoin was moved during the scam. FBI agents discovered an email address linked to the accounts and requested records matching from Coinbase and Binance, two popular cryptocurrency exchanges.
Their records i ncluded a British driver’s licence in Mr
Sheppard’s name, address and bearing a picture of him.
The National Crime Agency confirmed it had searched an address in Bognor on Friday after US prosecutors went public with the charges. It’s understood that computer equipment was seized. But Sheppard remained a free man last night. US sources indicated that there were ongoing discussions about whether they will seek to extradite the British teenager to face the charges at all. US authorities previously failed to extradite Lauri Love, a British student accused of breaking into US government websites, whose extradition was blocked by a High Court judge in 2018.
Sources said there were no current plans to arrest Sheppard but it is understood that this may change depending on what evidence was found during the search of his home. There was no sign of the alleged hacker yesterday at his mother Lorraine’s West Sussex home. A blonde middle- aged woman who came to the door said: ‘I have absolutely nothing to say. Please leave us alone.’
Neighbours described Sheppard as ‘a nice lad’ whose father Mark passed away around five years ago from a brain tumour.
According to documents published by the Department of Justice, the hack began with 17-year-old Graham Clark from Tampa, Florida, who ‘convinced a Twitter employee that he was a co-worker in the IT department’ and persuaded him to give him login details to company systems. Sheppard has been charged along with Clark and 22- year- old Nima Fazeli from Orlando. The charges of computer intrusion, wire fraud and money laundering carry a maximum penalty of 45 years in jail or a £575,000 fine.