A decide entered a not responsible plea Monday for a former Baltimore Ravens and College of Michigan assistant soccer coach who’s charged with hacking into the pc accounts of hundreds of faculty athletes to seek out intimate pictures, primarily of girls.
Matt Weiss’s look in federal court docket in Detroit was transient and got here 4 days after a 14-page indictment was filed. He’s accused of unauthorized pc entry and identification theft from 2015 till early 2023. Weiss and his legal professional, Douglas Mullkoff, waived a public studying of the indictment and later declined to touch upon the case.
Individually, a lawsuit looking for class-action standing was filed on 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,” legal professional Parker Stinar mentioned within the lawsuit.
The college has declined to remark.
Weiss gained entry to the databases of greater than 100 faculties and universities that have been maintained by a third-party vendor, Keffer Growth Providers, after which downloaded private info and medical information of greater than 150,000 athletes, in line with the indictment. 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 faculties throughout the nation, the indictment states.
“Weiss primarily focused feminine faculty athletes,” the indictment mentioned. “He researched and focused these girls based mostly on their faculty affiliation, athletic historical past and bodily traits. His objective was to acquire non-public images and movies by no means supposed to be shared past intimate companions.”
Weiss spent two seasons with Michigan earlier than he was fired in 2023 for not cooperating with a college investigation. He was co-offensive coordinator in 2022 when the Wolverines have been 13-1 and performed within the faculty soccer playoff. He had beforehand spent greater than a decade with the NFL’s Ravens in numerous teaching roles.
