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 hundreds of school athletes to search out intimate photographs, primarily of girls.
Matt Weiss’ look in federal courtroom in Detroit was transient 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 in search of 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 workforce.
The college violated its obligation “by failing to oversee and monitor Weiss and in consequence plaintiffs and hundreds 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 schools and universities that have been maintained by a third-party vendor, Keffer Growth Companies, after which downloaded private info 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 received entry to the social media, e mail and cloud storage accounts of greater than 2,000 athletes in addition to greater than 1,300 college students or alumni from colleges throughout the nation, in line with the indictment.
“Weiss primarily focused feminine school athletes,” the indictment stated. “He researched and focused these ladies based mostly on their faculty affiliation, athletic historical past and bodily traits. His objective was to acquire personal pictures and movies by no means meant to be shared past intimate companions.”
Weiss stored notes on photographs and movies that he downloaded, commenting on the our bodies and sexual preferences and generally 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, below coach John Harbaugh, Weiss moved to Michigan to work for Harbaugh’s brother, Jim Harbaugh.
It has been publicly identified for 2 years that Weiss was below scrutiny. His Ann Arbor residence was searched by police in January 2023, shortly earlier than he was fired. He stated on the time that he was cooperating and was trying “ahead to the matter being resolved.”
Reporting by The Related Press.
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