Dan WetzelMar 27, 2025, 07:00 AM ET
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- Dan Wetzel is a senior author concerned about investigative reporting, information research and have storytelling.
Westmont School is a Christian, 1,200-student liberal arts college tucked into the idyllic foothills overlooking Santa Barbara, California. Its 15 sports activities groups compete in Department II of the NCAA.
It’s, actually, geographically and athletically, 1000’s of miles from the College of Michigan, with its 50,000-plus scholar frame, 100,000-plus soccer stadium and bustling downtown Ann Arbor campus.
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So when the FBI arrived at Westmont a couple of years again and mentioned they have been investigating suspicious logins of college e mail accounts belonging to scholars and alumni, Jason Tavarez, the college’s director of institutional resilience, first of all nervous there were an inside safety failure or an IT drawback.
With the FBI providing scant element, there used to be no explanation why to believe this would possibly one way or the other contain a trainer from the long-lasting Michigan Wolverines soccer program.
And but there on Monday, on the federal courthouse in downtown Detroit, used to be Matt Weiss, a former U-M and Baltimore Ravens assistant trainer, pleading no longer to blame to 24 counts of unauthorized get admission to to computer systems and annoyed identification robbery. Weiss’ legal professional declined remark to ESPN following the arraignment.
The costs, prosecutors say, stem from a limiteless, in depth, just about decade-long effort to realize get admission to to the social media, e mail and iCloud accounts belonging to 1000’s of most commonly feminine university athletes so as to obtain “non-public, intimate images that weren’t publicly shared.”
That integrated, the feds price, a minimum of 5 ladies who competed for the Westmont Warriors.
“Completely stunning,” Tavarez mentioned. “Once I learn the indictment, I could not consider it.”
The Weiss information has left a lot of faculty athletics each stunned and involved in the place else and whom else Weiss would possibly have victimized.
Prosecutors say the quantity is roughly 3,300 athletes however have presented no specifics on folks and colleges outdoor of what is within the 14-page indictment.
“That is in reality prolific,” mentioned Carrie Goldberg of New York’s C.A. Goldberg Regulation Company, which focuses on instances of sexual privateness and sufferer rights, most commonly involving cyber crimes.
“It isn’t a ton of sufferers for anyone out of the country working a hacking ring,” Goldberg mentioned. “However with regards to a unmarried person no longer seeking to financially benefit, that is essentially the most prolific instance I have noticed.”
Observers say they are suffering to consider it — each that an in a different way a hit soccer trainer, married father of 3 and Vanderbilt grad would do what Weiss is accused of doing, let by myself how he may have controlled to drag it off.
Michigan fired Weiss as its co-offensive coordinator in January 2023 after the varsity exposed “inappropriately accessed” laptop accounts inside its soccer facility, Schembechler Corridor. He used to be incomes $850,000 a yr training a Large Ten championship group. Weiss, now 42, had up to now labored a dozen years with the Ravens of the NFL.
He’s imagined to have spent over the top time and effort discovering techniques to hack into the accounts of younger women, it sounds as if for his personal non-public use. He isn’t charged with publishing, promoting or sharing what he discovered, nor extorting the sufferers for cash, as is extra not unusual in most of these instances.
His preliminary access level, in line with his indictment, used to be gaining heightened get admission to to knowledge by way of the Keffer Building Services and products, a third-party contractor that assists in keeping the clinical data for some 150,000 athletes at roughly 100 colleges, together with Westmont. Keffer declined remark to ESPN at the scenario.
From there, prosecutors price, he decrypted Keffer’s code after which used open assets to realize non-public data, permitting him to bet or reset person passwords. His sufferers, the feds allege, weren’t random. He saved notes on “their college association, athletic historical past, and bodily traits” and later, if he discovered footage or movies, on “their our bodies and their sexual personal tastes,” in line with his indictment.
How the small-college athletes of Westmont may just’ve gotten on his radar is unknown.
If convicted, Weiss faces dozens of years in jail and hundreds of thousands in fines for movements that prosecutors allege ran from 2015, when he labored for the Ravens, till his 2023 Michigan firing. It’s however a part of the prospective felony fallout from this situation, one that would increase during university athletics.
Two feminine former Michigan athletes — a gymnast and a football participant — have already filed a category motion swimsuit towards Weiss, the college, its board of regents and Keffer Building Services and products over the alleged breach.
“This negligence has compromised the confidentiality of private, clinical, and intimate data resulting in profound emotions of betrayal, trauma, and worry amongst former feminine student-athletes and others affected,” legal professional Parker Stinar, of Chicago’s Stinar Gould Grieco & Hensley mentioned.
In 2022, Stinar received a $490 million agreement with Michigan for over 1,000 soccer avid gamers who alleged they’d been sexually abused by means of former soccer group physician Robert Anderson. He takes specific exception to Michigan’s loss of oversight of Weiss’ laptop job.
“We’re dedicated to retaining the College in command of its movements and to making sure that such disasters don’t occur once more,” Stinar mentioned.
Michigan director of public affairs Kay Jarvis mentioned the college has but to be served with the criticism and can not touch upon pending litigation. Keffer additionally declined to remark to ESPN at the lawsuit and total scenario.
The previous Michigan athletes are anticipated to be the primary of many complainants in probably many court cases towards different colleges. How a lot publicity a college faces due, partly, to the disasters of a 3rd occasion dealer will likely be a big a part of any case and most probably decided by means of indemnity clauses in contracts, attorneys instructed ESPN. Tavarez, of Westmont, mentioned the FBI instructed him they regarded as the varsity to be a sufferer of Weiss.
The bizarre nature of Weiss’ alleged use of the footage may be of passion. Circumstances of sextortion and revenge porn have risen over the years however maximum regulations, Goldberg famous, are in line with a offender the use of the fabric to hunt cash or motive misery and embarrassment to the sufferer. The perpetrators are steadily world scammers or ex-romantic companions. Different regulations of this nature “require a publishing component,” Goldberg famous.
None of this is defined within the indictment, which is the one data the FBI and america legal professional’s place of work has publicly shared. If the federal government’s narrative is proper, Weiss did not for my part know his sufferers and used to be covertly amassing a trove of explicit photographs for his personal use.
“His vice it sounds as if used to be his sufferers no longer consenting to be sexual leisure,” Goldberg mentioned.
The indictment states that Weiss’ crimes come with violations of “state torts of Invasion of Privateness” in Michigan, Maryland and Pennsylvania. A separate price comprises California. Criminal professionals consider the indictment most effective mentions the states associated with the 24 counts which are focused on simply 10 Jane Does. It’s conceivable, if not really, sufferers will come from many different places.
In the end, if Weiss used to be looking for doable sufferers, because the indictment alleges, at little Westmont, then state borders, college measurement or anything infrequently mattered.
“When I used to be speaking to the FBI, they mentioned that it used to be no longer simply us and no longer simply a few colleges,” Tavarez of Westmont instructed ESPN.
Tavarez mentioned the FBI contacted the sufferers related to Westmont and the varsity added that “any data applied on this investigation used to be finished so with the consent of the sufferers named on this indictment.”
Each Stinar and Goldberg mentioned that it’s crucial that each sufferer is contacted both by means of regulation enforcement or the universities after they develop into acutely aware of a breach. In the meantime, Westmont mentioned it has persevered its all the time ongoing efforts to safe the accounts of its scholars and alumni.
“It is heartbreaking,” Tavarez mentioned. “We’re very delicate to other folks’s data and the way we retailer it and what we use it for, so clearly you’re all the time nervous about hackers … I in reality really feel for the sufferers.”
Precisely what number of there could be, and what colleges they competed for, continues to be to be decided.
