(Adds FBI and DOJ material)
July 31 (Reuters) - Two teenagers and a 22-year-old were
charged with hacking the Twitter Inc accounts of famous
people including former President Barack Obama, billionaire Bill
Gates and Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk, the Department of
Justice said on Friday.
Mason Sheppard, a 19-year-old British man who went by the
alias Chaewon, was charged with carrying out the hack, as well
as related wire fraud and money laundering crimes, according to
a Justice Department statement.
Orlando-based Nima Fazeli, 22, nicknamed Rolex, was charged
with aiding and abetting those crimes.
The Justice Department did not name the third defendant, but
the Hillsborough County State Attorney's Office in Tampa said it
had arrested 17-year-old Graham Clark.
In a statement, Twitter said it appreciated the "swift
actions of law enforcement."
The FBI said that two of the accused had been taken into
custody, without identifying them.
Clark on July 15 posted messages under the profiles that
solicited investments in bitcoin, a digital currency, said the
Florida State Attorney's Office. A publicly available ledger of
bitcoin transactions showed he was able to obtain more than
$100,000 that way.
Reuters was unable to immediately locate his lawyer. The
Hillsborough County State Attorney's Office said it had no
information in its system about who was representing him.
Phone calls and an email to Clark's mother were not
immediately returned.
Hillsborough County State Attorney Andrew Warren told
journalists that his office had filed 30 felony charges against
Clark , who was in state custody.
Warren said the adolescent was being prosecuted under state
rather than federal law because Florida law enabled the state to
charge him as an adult.
"This was a massive fraud orchestrated right here in our own
backyard, and we won’t stand for that," he said.
(Reporting by Akanksha Rana in Bengaluru, Raphael Satter in
Washington, D.C., and Katie Paul in San Francisco; Editing by
Anil D'Silva and Cynthia Osterman)