Accountability
Former Twitter employee sentenced to 3.5 years in prison for sharing confidential info with Saudi official
A former Twitter employee was sentenced to 42 months in prison on Thursday after he was convicted of accepting bribes from a Saudi Arabian official in exchange for providing the kingdom with user information from the platform.
In August, a jury found Abouammo guilty of acting as a foreign agent without notice, money laundering and falsifying records as well as wire fraud and honest services fraud.
Ahmad Abouammo, who worked as a media partnership manager for Twitter’s Middle East and North Africa region, met with a close adviser to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on multiple occasions, accepting thousands of dollars worth of gifts as he provided information about Saudi dissidents’ Twitter accounts, according to multiple reports, who cited court documents.
“This case revealed that foreign governments will bribe insiders to obtain the user information that is collected and stored by our Silicon Valley social media companies,” U.S. Attorney Stephanie Hinds said after Abouammo’s sentencing.
“In handing down today’s sentence, the Court emphasized that defendant shared the user information with a foreign government known for not tolerating dissidents, and he did so working with his even more culpable co-defendant who fled the country rather than face trial,” Hinds said.
At a 2014 meeting in London, Abouammo reportedly received a Hublot watch that he later said was valued at $42,000. Days later, he sent a Saudi official information on a Saudi dissident who tweets about alleged corruption in the kingdom’s royal family.
He later laundered a $100,000 payment from the official into the U.S. in 2015, and lied about the incident when questioned by the FBI in 2018, court documents reportedly show.
“Mr. Abouammo violated the trust placed on him to protect the privacy of individuals living in the US by giving their personal information to a foreign power for profit,” Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen said. “His conduct was made all the more egregious by the fact that the information was intended to deny US persons of their lawful rights.”
Terry A. Hurlbut has been a student of politics, philosophy, and science for more than 35 years. He is a graduate of Yale College and has served as a physician-level laboratory administrator in a 250-bed community hospital. He also is a serious student of the Bible, is conversant in its two primary original languages, and has followed the creation-science movement closely since 1993.
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People better wake up to the nature of Islam. It is NOT a religion, but is theocracy that is dedicated to controlling the world and forcing people to worship the god Hubal/Baal. It is a depraved theocracy that promotes violence, depravity, and immorality. An Islam citizen is allowed to do what they want to any non-Islam citizen. People need to read the Qu’an (ISBN of one is 978-0-913321-01-0) and learn Islam real history. If people don’t like the things the “Left” does Islam is worse. Consider, if a women is raped she is killed for allowing her self to be raped. Real the Qur’an and learn what Mohammad did, the example Islam citizens follow, and note most people would never make such a person a standard to follow.