Former Twitter employee sold citizen info to Saudi Arabia

A federal jury has convicted a Twitter employee and a Walnut Creek resident of acting as an unregistered agent for a foreign government and illegally using Twitter information, authorities said.

Ahmad Abouammo, 44, of Seattle, was also convicted of conspiracy, obstruction, wire fraud, international money laundering and falsification in a federal investigation, according to a statement from U.S. District Attorney Stephanie M. Hinds. Northern California. . The jury returned its verdict on August 10 after a two-week trial.

The crimes stemmed from a bribery scheme aimed at accessing, monitoring and forwarding user information to officials of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and its royal family, authorities said.

Abouammo could receive a maximum of 10 years in federal prison on the charge of acting as a foreign agent and a maximum of 20 years on each of the other charges.

Court documents and evidence presented at trial showed Abouammo used his position as Twitter’s Manager of Media Partnerships for the Middle East-North Africa region to participate in the scheme, Hinds said. Abouammo was responsible for protecting Twitter user information and detecting violations of Twitter’s security policies.

Gifts from those who had business dealings with the company were supposed to be reported, but Hinds said they were not. When asked about it, Hinds said Abouammo lied to the FBI and forged a document.

Evidence at trial showed that Abouammo began accepting bribes from a Saudi Arabian official as early as December 2014. According to Hinds, Abouammo met with a foreign official in London and received a Hublot watch that Abouammo later said he sold for $42,000. on Craigslist. Hinds said Abouammo began accessing the private information of several Twitter accounts, one of which was a critic of the Saudi Royal Family.

Trial evidence also showed that Abouammo went to Lebanon in February 2015 and opened a bank account in the name of his father, who lived in the country. Abouammo gained access to the account; shortly after, $100,000 was poured into the account from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

According to Hinds, Abouammo laundered that $100,000 by sending it to the United States in small wire transfers and using false descriptions. Shortly after Abouammo left Twitter in May 2021, he received another $100,000 in the same account, along with a note apologizing for the late payment, Hinds said.