The Supreme Court issued a ruling Thursday siding with a former Twitter employee who sold company secrets to a high-level Saudi official, finding prosecutors charged him in the wrong federal court for falsifying an invoice.
Ahmad Abouammo was employed at a San Francisco office of Twitter, now X, when, in exchange for $300,000, he gave a Saudi official confidential information about Saudi dissidents posting on the social media platform. After Abouammo left the company and moved to Seattle, federal investigators interviewed him over the leak of company secrets. When Abouammo told investigators the payments he received were for consulting, rather than sharing secrets, he provided a fake invoice.
Abouammo was charged by federal prosecutors in San Francisco federal court, rather than a Seattle federal court, for falsifying a record, with prosecutors claiming he was charged in the Northern District of California because that was where the investigation originated. Abouammo asked the federal court to toss the charge, arguing it could only be filed in a federal court in Washington state, where the alleged crime occurred. After both a federal district court and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit denied Abouammo’s claims, the Supreme Court unanimously sided with the former X employee, holding that indictments must be brought in the district where the crime occurs, not where the investigation originates.
