NC college students say they're victims of coach's massive cyber hack

A coach is accused of stealing intimate photos and videos from student-athletes.

Now, former college students in North Carolina are suing, saying they are among the 150,000 victims.

Matthew Weiss is a former Baltimore Ravens and University of Michigan assistant football coach. He was indicted on 24 federal counts, accused of hacking into student-athlete accounts searching for intimate photos and videos. 

Attorneys are currently investigating whether there are victims of this hack at Shaw University and Wake Tech and have asked those schools to preserve records that could be relevant to a civil lawsuit.

However, the lawsuit filed Wednesday was on behalf of two former students at High Point University, who say their school failed them. 

“It's quickly turning into the largest cyber sexual assault case that we have seen in U.S. history,” said Lisa Esser-Weidenfeller, one of the attorneys who filed the lawsuit.

“This is a sexual assault,” added attorney Megan Bonanni. “We are calling this a digital form of sexual assault, a cyber form of sexual assault.”

The attorneys say their clients got letters from the Department of Justice saying their private information has been exposed. 

“There is an overarching feeling of betrayal that these victims have communicated to us that they feel from their university, from their college, that was supposed to keep their information safe, and they failed in that,” Bonanni said.

WRAL News reached out to High Point University for comment but did not get a response to an email or phone call.

According to the lawsuit, from 2015 through 2023, Weiss is accused of getting into an athletic training system used by colleges across the country to store information about student athletes. He's accused of downloading athletes’ personal information and using that information to hack into their social media, email and cloud accounts. That’s where personal photos and videos were accessed.

“What's been so stunning for us, is that we are hearing from students from all over the country,” Bonanni said.

The attorneys also expressed concern that people don’t know they are victims and are disregarding letters being sent by the Department of Justice. 

“So when they're getting these emails, they think, I don't know this Mr. Weiss, is this a scam? It asks them to click on links in that email, and we're all encouraged not to click on links, you know, by our employers, so they've disregarded it,” Esser-Weidenfeller explained.

WRAL News reached Weiss’ attorney by phone. He told us he was not available to make a comment.

Keffer Development Services operates the athletic training system that Weiss is accused of gaining unauthorized access to. WRAL News called the company, but the person who answered the phone told us “no comment.”

WRAL News has also reached out to Shaw University and Wake Tech about whether they are aware of any student information being compromised in this case. Neither has responded to our request for comment.

A Wake Tech spokesperson said, "We are looking into the situation and gathering more information."

Shaw University has not responded.