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 manager of media partnerships for the Middle East/North Africa region, was found guilty of multiple offenses, including acting as a foreign agent for 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 the misuse of personal information or attempts by foreign governments to recruit secret and malicious agents into U.S. technology companies.
"In this case, the government proved, and the jury found, that Abouammo violated a sacred duty to keep private personal information of Twitter customers private and sold private customer 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 noted that the recipient of the private information is known to target people seen as opponents.
"Abouammo acted covertly 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 reported that, according to evidence presented at trial, Abouammo began receiving bribes from an official of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia 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 from 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 thereafter, 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. In addition, each count carries a fine of up to $250,000 and additional periods of supervised release following the prison sentence.
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 Export Control and Counterintelligence Section are prosecuting the case with the assistance of Beth Margen and Alycee Lane. The indictment is the result of an FBI investigation.
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