A federal jury convicted a former Twitter manager Wednesday of selling users’ private information to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Ahmad Abouammo, a former media partnerships manager for Twitter’s Middle East/North Africa region, was found guilty of multiple felonies, including acting as a foreign agent of Saudi Arabia without providing notice to 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.
The evidence at trial demonstrated that Abouammo took bribes in exchange for accessing, monitoring and conveying the private information of Twitter users to officials of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Saudi Royal family, according to the announcement.
Hinds said the Department of Justice does not tolerate the misuse of personal information or attempts by foreign governments to recruit secret, malign agents at American technology companies.
“In this case, the government demonstrated, and the jury found, that Abouammo violated a sacred trust to keep private personal information from Twitter’s customers and sold private customer information to a foreign government,” she said.
“Abouammo’s decision to accept bribes in exchange for providing to a foreign government the protected information of customers could have untold damaging consequences.”
Prosecutors said the recipient of the private information is known for targeting people viewed as opponents.
“Abouammo acted in secret as an agent of a foreign government targeting dissenting voices,” said Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen of the Justice Department’s National Security Division. “This verdict shows that the Justice Department will not tolerate any act of transnational repression and will hold accountable those who aid hostile regimes in extending their reach to our shores.”
The department’s announcement reported that according to the 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 in 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 demonstrated that Abouammo provided false information to the FBI investigators and falsified an invoice for one of the payments he received from the foreign official.
Abouammo was arrested on Nov. 5, 2019, but did not leave his job at Twitter until May 2021. Shortly thereafter, he received another $100,000 into the 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 counts. In addition, each count carries up to a $250,000 fine and additional periods of supervised release to follow the prison term.
One caught out of how many not?
It’s a ‘me,me’ world and to hell with everyone else.
Our enemies are already here..they live amongst us and are hiding in plain sight.
The powers of be throughout the years have allowed this to happen, and the worst of all China owns us and American people still invest in China and we let China invest in us..
Stupidity at its finest!
They’re here and the southern border is wide open-there will likely be more.
Put him away for max term and take the money.
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 in a bank account in his father’s name in Lebanon.
He should have changed his name to Hunter. This story is almost like a joke.
What an interesting story, who knew spies in Walnut Creek? Wonder where he lived?? Will he go to federal prison, or get swapped back to Saudi Arabia???
Prison time??? I’m old-school. Let him face a firing squad.
Throw the book at him – lock ’em up – throw away the key
And politicians like Joe, Karmela and Garvin think that wide open borders are a good thing.
A friend of mine was one of the first 200 at Google, he used to tell me the halls were crawling with NSA and intelligence people.
@LocalAntiLib,
Agree, when my father was in Indonesia the Japanese lived among them and they were the grocers, barbers. Turns out they were soldiers doing their due diligence. My dad was in a concentration camp with those soldiers guarding them all, he was only 13.
Didn’t the Saudi give $2 billion to Trump’s son-in-law?
I’m sure that was in exchange for nothing.
No, but Hunter was on many communist payrolls with his Big Daddy’s influence. But that’s okay if your woked, right?
The real question here is: how many people have been imprisoned or murdered as the result of the information he provided the Saudis?