ANN ARBOR, Mich. (WXYZ) — Former Michigan football quarterbacks coach and co-offensive coordinator Matt Weiss was indicted on two dozen cybercrime charges on Thursday, the Acting U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan Julie Beck announced.
It comes more than two years after Weiss was fired from the team in January 2023. No reason was given at the time for his firing.
According to the U.S. Attorney's Office, Weiss is charged with 14 counts of unauthorized access to computers and 10 counts of aggravated identity theft.
It's alleged that between 2015 and January 2023, Weiss gained unauthorized access to student-athlete databases of more than 100 colleges and universities. After gaining access, the feds say he downloaded personally identifiable information and medical data of more than 150,000 athletes.
Then, the feds say that he was able to use that information to access social media, email and cloud storage accounts of more than 2,000 athletes. He also allegedly illegally obtained access to social media, email and cloud storage accounts of more than 1,300 students or alumni from universities around the country.
Watch below: Michigan co-offensive coordinator Matt Weiss fired
The feds say that he downloaded personal, intimate digital photographs and videos that were never intended to be shared beyond intimate partners.
According to the criminal complaint, Weiss "primarily targeted female college athletes. He researched and targeted these women based on their school affiliation, athletic history, and physical characteristics. His goal was to obtain private photographs and videos never intended to share beyond intimate partners."
“Our office will move aggressively to prosecute computer hacking to protect the private accounts of our citizens,” said Acting U.S. Attorney Julie Beck. “We stand ready with our law enforcement partners to bring those who illegally invade the privacy of others to justice.”
"Today’s indictment of Matthew Weiss underscores the commitment and meticulous investigative efforts of our law enforcement professionals,” FBI Special Agent in Charge of Michigan Cheyvoryea Gibson added in a statement. “The FBI Detroit Cyber Task Force, in close collaboration with the University of Michigan Police Department, worked relentlessly on this case to safeguard and protect our community.”
In October 2023, ESPN reported that the FBI joined the investigation into Weiss.
Weiss' firing came two days after a Michigan employee alerted the university to "fraudulent activity involving someone accessing university emails accounts without authorization," according to the university daily crime log.
“The scope of this is really incredible. The number of people he targeted is beyond what you would typically expect with this kind of offense,” said Thomas Holt, a cybersecurity expert and professor at Michigan State University. “It appears as though he used someone else’s credentials to gain access to the database because he had some degree of access, but it wasn’t enough to give him the information that he was looking for.”
Holt says two-factor authentication, which is an extra layer of login protection, may have stopped Weiss from gaining initial access to the database in the first place. Holt also said people should also create stronger passwords.
“We know that people do try to gain access to accounts and when it’s someone who is in the public eye, you are subject to this kind of thing. It’s unfortunate but that’s the time that we live in," Holt said. “It reinforces the notion that we’ve got to be careful about what we do and how visible we are online.”
— 7 News Detroit reporter Darren Cunningham contributed to this report.
