Former NFL coach pleads not guilty over alleged hacking of athletes’ intimate photos
A judge entered a not guilty plea Monday for a former Baltimore Ravens and University of Michigan assistant football coach who is charged with hacking into the computer accounts of thousands of college athletes to find intimate images, primarily of women.
Matt Weiss’s appearance in federal court in Detroit was brief and came four days after a 14-page indictment was filed. He is accused of unauthorized computer access and identity theft from 2015 until early 2023. Weiss and his attorney, Douglas Mullkoff, waived a public reading of the indictment and later declined to comment on the case.
Separately, a lawsuit seeking class-action status was filed on Friday on behalf of a former University of Michigan female gymnast and a former member of the women’s soccer team. The university violated its duty “by failing to supervise and monitor Weiss and as a result plaintiffs and thousands of others have had their privacy illegally invaded,” attorney Parker Stinar said in the lawsuit.
The university has declined to comment.
Weiss gained access to the databases of more than 100 colleges and universities that were maintained by a third-party vendor, Keffer Development Services, and then downloaded personal information and medical data of more than 150,000 athletes, according to the indictment. He then got access to the social media, email and cloud storage accounts of more than 2,000 athletes, as well as more than 1,300 students or alumni from schools across the country, the indictment states.
“Weiss primarily targeted female college athletes,” the indictment said. “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 be shared beyond intimate partners.”
Weiss spent two seasons with Michigan before he was fired in 2023 for not cooperating with a school investigation. He was co-offensive coordinator in 2022 when the Wolverines were 13-1 and played in the college football playoff. He had previously spent more than a decade with the NFL’s Ravens in various coaching roles.
