A federal jury on Wednesday convicted a former Twitter manager of selling private user information to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Ahmad Abouammo, Twitter’s former media partnerships manager for the Middle East/North Africa region, was found guilty of multiple crimes, including acting as a foreign agent of Saudi Arabia without notifying the Attorney General, money laundering, conspiracy, and falsifying records.
The verdict against the 44-year-old former Walnut Creek resident follows a two-week trial, according to an announcement Wednesday from the office of U.S. Attorney Stephanie M. Hinds of the Northern District of California.
Evidence at trial showed that Abouammo accepted bribes in exchange for accessing, monitoring and transmitting Twitter users' private information to officials of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Saudi royal family, according to the announcement.
Hinds said the Justice Department does not tolerate misuse of personal information or attempts by foreign governments to recruit secret and malicious agents into American technology companies.
"In this case, the government demonstrated, and the jury found, that Abouammo violated a sacred duty to keep Twitter customers' personal information private and sold customers' private information to a foreign government," he said.
“Abouammo’s decision to accept bribes in exchange for providing a foreign government with protected client information could have incalculable damaging consequences.”
Prosecutors said the recipient of the private information is known for targeting people seen as opponents.
“Abouammo secretly acted as an agent of a foreign government seeking dissenting voices,” said Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen of the Justice Department’s National Security Division. “This verdict shows that the Department of Justice will not tolerate any act of transnational repression and will hold accountable those who help hostile regimes extend their reach to our shores.”
The department's announcement said that according to evidence presented at trial, Abouammo began receiving bribes from a Saudi Arabian official as early as December 2014, including one in 2015 for $100,000 deposited into a bank account in his father's name in Lebanon.
In October 2018, FBI agents interviewed Abouammo at his residence about his involvement in the scheme with officials of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Evidence at trial showed that Abouammo provided false information to FBI investigators and falsified an invoice for one of the payments he received from the foreign official.
Abouammo was arrested on November 5, 2019, but did not leave his job at Twitter until May 2021. Shortly afterward, he received another $100,000 in his bank account in Lebanon.
Abouammo faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison for the charge of acting as an agent of a foreign government and 20 years in prison for each of the other charges. Additionally, each charge carries a fine of up to $250,000 and additional periods of supervised release after the prison term.
Assistant U.S. Attorneys Colin Sampson and Eric Cheng of the Northern District of California and Trial Attorney Christine Bonomo of the National Security Division’s Counterintelligence and Export Control Section are prosecuting the case with assistance from Beth Margen and Alycee Lane. The indictment is the result of an FBI investigation.
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