McKenzie Johnson, a former softball player at Grambling State University in Louisiana, says former University of Michigan football coach Matt Weiss gained access to her private pictures and videos stored on her phone.
She told the Scripps News Group that she was "very taken aback" by the whole situation.
"I’m a very young professional, you know? I’m in a Fortune 500 company. I don’t know what’s going to come of this or what’s going to be exposed,” said Johnson.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT | Ex-Michigan QB coach facing federal charges in hack of student accounts
Weiss, 42, is accused of illegally gaining access to more than 3,000 women’s email, social media, and cloud storage accounts and downloading intimate pictures and videos — many of which show victims naked and some showing them engaged in explicit sexual acts.
“As a woman, you know, it’s very sensitive information that’s compromised," said Johnson. "So my hope is to empower other women to come forward and bring light to this situation."
Attorney Jonathan Marko is representing Johnson and more than 40 unidentified women in a lawsuit against Weiss, the University of Michigan, its Board of Regents, and Keffer Development Services, which maintains a student athlete database used by more than 100 colleges.
Marko filed a temporary restraining order to secure the compromised pictures and videos.
“If the University has the data, it needs to be taken from the University and put into a secure database, third party, away from the University, that nobody can have access to except only people who are authorized, which is the lawyers or the investigators,” said Marko.
FROM THE ARCHIVES | FBI joins probe into former Michigan football coach Matt Weiss
“What did they do to protect these young women who they knew their private data was stolen and misused by their employee? What did they do to protect them, and why did they find out now, years later?” Marko added.
Weiss is charged with 14 counts of unauthorized access to computers and 10 counts of aggravated identity theft. If convicted, he faces up to five years in prison on each count of unauthorized access to computers and two years on each count of aggravated identity theft.
Kay Jarvis, Director of Public Affairs for the University of Michigan, provided a statement saying:
While the federal indictment asserts that Matt Weiss improperly accessed online accounts of unsuspecting individuals between approximately 2015 and January 2023, Weiss was employed by the University of Michigan for less than 2 years, from February, 2021 to January, 2023. Count 23 of the indictment is specific to the University of Michigan and alleges that Weiss accessed protected UM computers without or in excess of authorization from December 21, 2022 to December 23, 2022. Upon learning of potentially concerning activity in its systems, the University promptly placed Mr. Weiss on leave, forwarded this matter to law enforcement authorities and moved forward with Mr. Weiss' termination on January 21, 2023.
This story was originally published by the Scripps News Group in Detroit.
