Ex-Twitter employee jailed for spying on users for Saudi Arabia

Dec. 16 (UPI) -- A former Twitter employee has been sentenced to more than three years in jail for using his position at the social media company to steal personal information about Saudi dissidents for the Saudi Royal Family.

U.S. District Judge Edward Chen sentenced Ahmad Abouammo, 45, of Seattle, Wash., to 42 months after being convicted in August. Prosecutors showed during the two-week trial that he had used his position at the social media company to accept bribes from Saudi Arabian officials in exchange for the personal information of targets he had access to via their Twitter accounts.

"Exposing dissident information is a serious offense," Chen said during sentencing, while describing Abouammo's actions as "serious" and "consequential."

Evidence presented during the trial showed that Abouammo -- who worked as a media partnership manager for the Middle East and North Africa region at Twitter -- had accepted bribes from Saudi officials as far back as December of 2014.

Prosecutors said the targets of Twitter accounts accessed were critics of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Saudi Royal family. The accounts accessed were not identified, but Justice Department officials have said at least one of them belonged to "an influential user who was critical of members of the Saudi Royal Family" and the Saudi government.

The official who had paid Abouammo was identified by the Justice Department as the head of a royal family member's private office.

During the trial, Justice Department lawyers said that Abouammo repeatedly accessed the private information of the specific Twitter users following a meeting in London with the Saudi official who gave the American a luxury Hublot watch that Abouammo later said on a Craigslist advertisement was worth $42,000.

In 2015, Abouammo made a trip to Lebanon where evidence presented at trial showed a bank account in his father's name was opened and in which the Saudi official had deposited $100,000. Abouammo then sent the funds to the United States in small wire transfers under false descriptions, the Justice Department said.

Prosecutors also showed that during an October 2018 interview with FBI, Abouammo provided false information about his involvement in the conspiracy.

"Mr. Abouammo violated the trust placed on him to protect the privacy of individuals by giving their personal information to a foreign power for profit," Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen of the Justice Department's National Security Division said in a statement.

"His conduct was made all the more egregious by the fact that the information was intended to target political dissidents speaking out against that foreign power."

Abouammo, who is ordered to surrender on March 31 to begin his prison term, has also been sentenced to three years of supervised release and to forfeit the $242,000 that he received from the Saudi official.

"This sentence sends a message to insiders with access to user information to safeguard it, particularly from repressive regimes, or risk significant time in prison," U.S. Attorney Stephanie Hinds for the Northern District of California said.