FBI arrested the troll who allegedly sent seizure-inducing tweet to a journalist
A tweet has led to an arrest -- three months after it was sent.
Back on Dec. 15, Vanity Fair contributing editor and Newsweek senior writer Kurt Eichenwald shared that someone had targeted him with a strobing tweet. The flashing tweet, sent by a Twitter user going by the handle @jew_goldstein, gave the journalist a seizure. He is a known epileptic and Eichenwald believed he had been targeted for his political views.
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After the harrowing Twitter experience, he posted he was taking a breather from the platform and pursuing legal action against the violent tweeter.
Fast-forward a few months and on Friday morning Eichenwald posted (on Twitter, where he returned earlier this year) that the FBI had arrested the person believed to be behind the @jew_goldstein Twitter account.
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A call to Eichenwald's attorney Steven Lieberman on Friday morning confirmed that a man was arrested in Maryland on Friday morning in connection with the strobing tweet. An FBI spokeswoman also confirmed the arrest.
The accused is 29-year-old John Rivello, the Department of Justice said in a statement on Friday evening, and he has been charged with cyberstalking Eichenwald. It's alleged Rivello sent the strobing GIF with the words "You deserve a seizure for your post."
Rivello, according to the allegations, had been messaging other Twitter users sharing his knowledge of Eichenwald's epilepsy and with statements such as "I hope this sends him into a seizure" and "spammed this at [victim] let's see if he dies."
Rivello's iCloud account is also being used as evidence, as it allegedly contained a screenshot of a Wikipedia page for Eichenwald, which had been altered to include a date of death as Dec. 16, 2016. The account also had screenshots from epilepsy.com that showed triggers for seizures and screenshots of Eichenwald's report to the police.
Following the arrest on Friday, Eichenwald went on a Twitter spree with claims the tweeter is just one person in a group of 40 people who sent strobes with the intention of triggering seizures. "Stop sending them," he pleaded.
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UPDATE: March 17, 2017, 8:46 p.m. EDT The Department of Justice released details regarding the identity of the suspect.
Topics Social Media X/Twitter
Sasha is a news writer at Mashable's San Francisco office. She's an SF native who went to UC Davis and later received her master's from the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. She's been reporting out of her hometown over the years at Bay City News (news wire), SFGate (the San Francisco Chronicle website), and even made it out of California to write for the Chicago Tribune. She's been described as a bookworm and a gym rat.
