Twitter employee found guilty of snooping for Saudi Arabia

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Twitter employee found guilty of snooping for Saudi Arabia

SAN FRANCISCO - Former Twitter Inc. employee Ahmad Abouammo was found guilty of snooping for Saudi Arabia after passing on private user information associated with critics of the kingdom in exchange for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Abouammo, 44, who worked at Twitter TWTR from 2013 to 2015, managing media partnerships with high-profile users in the Middle East and North Africa, was found guilty of money laundering, falsification of records and one count of wire fraud by the 11-person jury on Tuesday. Abouammo was found innocent on five other counts of wire fraud.

Abouammo accessed the email accounts and phone numbers of accounts that criticised the Saudi government, including the anonymously run account mujtahidd, repeatedly, prosecutors said. He then shared that information with a Saudi official who, in exchange, gave him a luxury watch and hundreds of thousands of dollars, according to prosecutors. Abouammo took bribes close to three times his annual salary for almost a year, and he paid for a mole, prosecutor Eric Cheng said in closing arguments last week. We all know that money is not for nothing. It is embarrassing to watch your daughter in Love Island.