A choose entered a not-guilty plea Monday for a former Baltimore Ravens and University of Michigan assistant soccer coach who’s charged with hacking into the pc accounts of 1000’s of faculty athletes to seek out intimate photographs, primarily of girls.
Matt Weiss’ look in federal courtroom in Detroit was temporary and got here 4 days after a 14-page indictment was filed. He is accused of unauthorized pc entry and identification theft from 2015 till early 2023.
Weiss and lawyer Douglas Mullkoff waived a public studying of the indictment and later declined to remark throughout a chilly, windy stroll to a parking zone.
Individually, a lawsuit looking for class-action standing was filed Friday on behalf of a former College of Michigan feminine gymnast and a former member of the ladies’s soccer crew.
The college violated its responsibility “by failing to oversee and monitor Weiss and because of this plaintiffs and 1000’s of others have had their privateness illegally invaded,” lawyer Parker Stinar stated within the lawsuit.
The college declined to remark.
Weiss, who spent two seasons with Michigan, was fired in 2023 as co-offensive coordinator after failing to cooperate with the college’s investigation of his entry to computer systems.
From 2015 to 2023, Weiss gained entry to the databases of greater than 100 faculties and universities that have been maintained by a third-party vendor, Keffer Improvement Providers, after which downloaded private data and medical information of greater than 150,000 athletes, the indictment states.
The 14-page doc portrays him as a pc whiz, saying Weiss “cracked the encryption defending the passwords, assisted by analysis that he did on the web.”
He then acquired entry to the social media, electronic mail and cloud storage accounts of greater than 2,000 athletes in addition to greater than 1,300 college students or alumni from faculties throughout the nation, in response to the indictment.
“Weiss primarily focused feminine faculty athletes,” the indictment stated. “He researched and focused these girls based mostly on their faculty affiliation, athletic historical past and bodily traits. His purpose was to acquire personal pictures and movies by no means meant to be shared past intimate companions.”
Weiss stored notes on pictures and movies that he downloaded, commenting on the our bodies and sexual preferences and typically returning years later to search for new photographs, the indictment stated.
“Our workplace will transfer aggressively to prosecute pc hacking to guard the personal accounts of our residents,” Julie Beck, the performing U.S. lawyer in Detroit, stated of the costs.
After greater than a decade as an assistant coach with the Ravens, underneath coach John Harbaugh, Weiss moved to Michigan to work for Harbaugh’s brother, Jim Harbaugh.
It has been publicly recognized for 2 years that Weiss was underneath scrutiny. His Ann Arbor house was searched by police in January 2023, shortly earlier than he was fired. He stated on the time that he was cooperating and was wanting “ahead to the matter being resolved.”
Reporting by The Related Press.
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