Ahmad Abouammo

Ahmad Abouammo is a United States citizen who worked as a media partnerships manager at Twitter from November 2013 until May 2015. He was convicted in August 2022 of acting as an agent of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, among other counts, and sentenced to 42 months in prison in the Twitter Saudi espionage case. After the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit vacated the sentence he was resentenced on June 26, 2025 to time served.¹²³

Employment and access

The complaint describes Abouammo as a United States citizen who lived in the Northern District of California from November 2013 until May 22, 2015, and then in Seattle.⁴ The Justice Department described his position as Media Partnerships Manager for the Middle East and North Africa region.⁵ His role gave him access to Twitter's internal systems, through which he could search for users by username and view their email addresses, telephone numbers and IP addresses.² The complaint alleges that he used that access without any legitimate business purpose.⁴

Abouammo arranged a tour of the San Francisco office for a group of Saudi visitors in June 2014. The official who attended the tour later had contact with him directly.⁶ In December 2014 Abouammo met Bader al-Asaker, named in the Ninth Circuit opinion as Bader Binasaker, at a Twitter meeting in London. After that meeting, according to the Ninth Circuit, he accessed the email and phone information for the @mujtahidd account on various occasions.² He left Twitter in May 2015, moved to Seattle and started a freelance social media consultancy.²

Payments and the watch

The complaint states that the official gave Abouammo a Hublot Unico Big Bang King Gold Ceramic watch in London in December 2014. Abouammo later advertised it online, describing it as worth $35,000 and offering it for no less than $25,000.⁴ He told the FBI that the watch was "plasticky and cheap and worth approximately $500" and that he had received $100,000 from the official. The complaint states that he had received at least $300,000.²⁴ The Supreme Court's opinion states that the official wired him $300,000 in total.⁷

The payments include a $100,000 wire in February 2015 to a Beirut account that the Ninth Circuit describes as opened under his father's name, a $100,000 wire in July 2015 to the same Lebanese account, and a $100,000 wire in January 2016 to a Chase Bank account that Abouammo had opened.²⁴ The Justice Department stated at trial that he laundered the February 2015 money by sending it into the United States in small wire transfers with false descriptions.⁵ The superseding indictment charges him with money laundering, conspiracy to commit wire fraud and falsification of records.⁶

The FBI interview

On October 20, 2018 two FBI agents interviewed Abouammo at his home in Seattle. He told them that Binasaker worked for MiSK and the Prince Salman Youth Center, and that he had been paid $100,000 for services after leaving Twitter. He then emailed the agents two invoices, the second of which, according to its metadata, was created while he was upstairs retrieving it. That invoice is the document charged under 18 U.S.C. 1519.²⁷

Trial and sentence

A jury in San Francisco found Abouammo guilty on August 9, 2022 on Count One (acting as an agent of a foreign government), Count Four (conspiracy to commit wire fraud and honest services fraud), Count Eleven (wire fraud), Counts Twenty and Twenty-One (money laundering) and Count Twenty-Three (falsification of records). It acquitted him on five counts of wire fraud, and nine other counts were dismissed without prejudice.¹³

Judge Edward M. Chen sentenced him in December 2022 to 42 months in prison, concurrent on each count, with three years of supervised release and forfeiture of $242,000. The advisory Guidelines range was 70 to 87 months.²⁸

Appeal, resentencing and Supreme Court review

The Ninth Circuit affirmed the convictions and vacated the sentence on December 4, 2024, and remanded for resentencing.² At the resentencing on June 26, 2025 Judge Chen found a Guidelines range of 33 to 41 months and imposed time served on each of the six counts, with two years of supervised release, a $600 special assessment and no fine. The amended judgment of July 2, 2025 retains the $242,000 forfeiture.³

The Supreme Court granted certiorari on the venue question on December 5, 2025. On June 11, 2026 it reversed the Ninth Circuit in No. 25-5146, in a unanimous opinion by Justice Kagan, holding that a prosecution under 18 U.S.C. 1519 must be brought in the district where the falsification occurred, here Seattle, and remanded the case.⁷⁹