Police this month arrested a suspect in a massive Twitter hack that compromised the accounts of Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Apple, Uber, Barack Obama, and dozens of other prominent individuals. According to the Hillsborough State Attorney's Office, a 17-year-old man, the alleged "ringleader" of the hack, was arrested after an investigation involving the FBI, IRS, Secret Service, U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of California, and Florida law enforcement agencies.

Messages posted to the unauthorized Twitter account asked followers to pay into a bitcoin account and promised to double the amount deposited as a "favor" to fans. It may seem like a transparent ploy, but it worked: the teen reportedly raised over $100,000 in one day.

"Although these crimes were committed in the names of celebrities and high-profile individuals, they are not the primary victims here. This 'Bit-Con' was created to steal money from ordinary Americans across the country, including here in Florida. This massive scam was set up right here in our own backyard, and we will not tolerate it," said State Attorney Andrew H. Warren.

The suspects now face 30 felony charges, including:

Despite the arrests, the DA's office said that "Bitcoin, a cryptocurrency, is difficult to trace and recover if stolen in a fraud," suggesting that stolen money may not be recovered.

"Working together, we will hold these defendants accountable. It is always wrong to defraud people of their hard-earned money," Warren said.

"If you're taking advantage of someone, whether in person or over the Internet, and trying to steal their cash or cryptocurrency, that's fraud, that's illegal, and you can't get away with it.

Shortly after the teen's arrest, three more arrests were announced. 19-year-old Mason "Chewon" Shepherd of Bognor Regis, England; 22-year-old Nima "Rolex" Fazeli of Orlando, Florida; and another boy, whose name cannot be revealed.

Twitter also posted an update on the "security incident," stating that a "phone spear phishing attack" targeting employees ultimately gave hackers access to Twitter's account support tools and was used to post fraudulent tweets from 45 different accounts The company states that Twitch was also forced to block tweets from all authenticated accounts for several hours in order to thwart the hack.

"The attack relied on a significant and coordinated attempt to deceive certain employees and exploit human vulnerabilities to gain access to internal systems. This attack was a reminder of how important each and every one of our team members is in protecting our services. We take this responsibility seriously and everyone at Twitter is committed to keeping your information safe," Twitter said.

Since the attack, access to these tools has been "severely restricted," meaning that some functionality has been "affected" and that responses to account support requests and abuse tweet reports have been delayed.

Thanks, The Verge.