In a 24-count indictment, a former NFL and college football coach was accused of gaining access to 3,300 students’ internet accounts in order to download their private images and videos.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Michigan said on Thursday that 42-year-old Matt Weiss is charged with 10 counts of aggravated identity theft and 14 counts of unauthorised computer access.
Prior to his dismissal in January 2023, Weiss served as a co-offensive coordinator at the University of Michigan. He was accused of gaining unauthorised access to other people’s computer accounts.
The indictment claims that Weiss gained access to a third-party database that contained data on student-athletes from over 100 colleges and universities nationwide. He allegedly accomplished this “by compromising the passwords” of employees who had higher-level database access.
“After gaining access to these databases, Weiss downloaded the personally identifiable information (PII) and medical data of more than 150,000 athletes,” according to the charges.
To “obtain personal information such as their mothers’ maiden names, pets, places of birth, and nicknames,” Weiss broke the encryption securing the players’ passwords and carried out more research, according to the indictment.
According to the indictment, Weiss used all of that information to either reset or guess the passwords of 2,000 students. He allegedly targeted female student-athletes’ email, cloud storage, and social media accounts.
“Once he obtained access to the accounts of targeted athletes, Weiss searched for and downloaded personal, intimate photographs and videos that were not publicly shared,” according to the charge.
According to the indictment, Weiss also had access to the private accounts of 1,300 students or graduates who attended educational institutions around the nation.
“In at least several instances, Weiss exploited vulnerabilities in universities’ account authentication processes to gain access to the accounts of students or alumni,” according to the charges.
Weiss’s lawyer is not listed in federal court documents, and it’s unknown if he’s in federal custody. On Thursday, a call to Weiss’s stated phone number was not immediately answered.
The University of Michigan referred enquiries to the U.S. attorney’s office and declined to comment on the charges.
The maximum penalty for each charge of unauthorised computer access is five years in federal prison. The mandatory minimum penalty for a conviction on an aggravated identity theft charge is two years.
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According to his official website, Weiss spent 12 seasons as an assistant coach with the Baltimore Ravens before being hired at the official of Michigan in 2021. He was employed at Stanford University prior to that.
Weiss was employed by Jim Harbaugh, the current coach of the Los Angeles Chargers, who had previously served as head football coach at Stanford and Michigan. Weiss would have collaborated with John Harbaugh, Harbaugh’s brother, who has been the Ravens’ head coach since 2008.
