By Michael Hernandez
WASHINGTON (AA) - A former Twitter employee was sentenced to three-and-a-half years in prison for acting as an undeclared foreign agent of Saudi Arabia, the Justice Department said Thursday.
Ahmad Abouammo, 45, was sentenced Wednesday to 42 months behind bars for using his role at Twitter to access, monitor and convey confidential and sensitive information that could be used to identify and locate people of interest to the Saudi royal family, the agency said in a statement.
“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. 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,” said Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen.
“We are committed to holding accountable those who act unlawfully as unregistered foreign agents and advance hidden influence campaigns on behalf of foreign regimes," he added.
Court records show Abouammo began receiving bribes from the Saudis beginning in at least December 2014 while he was a media partnerships manager for the Middle East and North Africa at Twitter. The bribes were made in exchange for information about dissidents and critics of the Saudi government and royal family.
Abouammo was convicted of lying to the FBI about the payoffs and he falsified a document about the payments in October 2018. The bribes came from a Saudi official who headed the royal family's "private office," and who was a minister of state before becoming a minister of defense and is now a deputy crown prince, according to the Justice Department.
Judge Edward Chen, of the Northern District of California, said in court while sentencing Abouammo that his actions were "serious" and "consequential," further emphasizing that "exposing dissident information is a serious offense."
In addition to his prison term, Abouammo was given three years of supervision and ordered to forfeit $242,000, which is the total given to him by the Saudi official in direct payments and a high-end watch he sold on the Craigslist website.