A Twitter executive was found guilty Tuesday of spying on Americans and funnelling money on behalf of the Saudi Arabian government.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) indicted Abouammo, along with two others, on July 28, 2020, for using his position at Twitter to acquire information about Twitter users, which he then handed to the Saudi Royal Family, in exchange for hundreds of thousands of dollars, the indictment claims.
The jury found Abouammo guilty of acting as an unregistered agent of the Saudi government, but excused him from the charges he shared with fellow Twitter employee Ali Alzabarah, who is charged with continuing the scheme after Abouammo left Twitter in May 2015.
Dailycaller.com reports: “They paid for a mole,” said prosecutor Eric Cheng in last week’s closing arguments, noting that Abouammo was paid in bribes three times his salary, according to The Wall Street Journal. “We all know that kind of money is not for nothing.”
Abuoammo’s job with Twitter was to manage media for high-profile users in the Middle East and North Africa, the WSJ reported. Abouammo was found guilty of money laundering, wire fraud and the falsification of records in addition to the charge of acting as an unregistered foreign agent, the WSJ reported.
In exchange for his work on behalf of the Saudi government, he was gifted a luxury watch, and three $100,000 dollar payments were wired to a bank account in his father’s name in Lebanon, Courthouse News reported.
The indictment also claims that Abouammo lied about the value of his watch, as well as the nature of the wire transfers, when confronted by Twitter.
Abuoamma was arrested in 2019 in Seattle, after working briefly at Amazon, according to The New York Times. Abouammo was free on bail but traveled to the trial in San Francisco, the NYT reported.
The government claims that the scheme was orchestrated by Bader Binaskar who was a rising star in the Saudi government at the time, according to the WSJ. Binaskar is not named in the indictment.
Alzabarah fled to Saudi Arabia when confronted by Twitter’s management, the NYT reported.
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