BOSTON, Feb 4 (Reuters) - An Illinois man pleaded guilty on Wednesday to phishing the Snapchat access codes of nearly 600 women in order to hack their accounts and steal nude photos, which he kept, sold or traded on the internet.
Kyle Svara, 26, pleaded guilty in federal court in Boston to charges including computer fraud and aggravated identity theft in a case that spilled out of an earlier prosecution of a former Northeastern University track-and-field coach who paid him to hack the accounts of student athletes and other women.
Prosecutors agreed under a plea deal to recommend that Svara receive three years in prison when he is sentenced on May 18.
"He has taken full responsibility for his actions to his family and close friends, and today's plea was a significant relief as it allowed him to finally accept responsibility publicly," Todd Pugh, a lawyer for Svara, said in a statement.
According to prosecutors, Svara from May 2020 to February 2021 used social engineering and other means to collect login information for women on the Snap-operated social media platform.
He circumvented the site's authentication checks by asking women for their security codes in messages claiming to be from Snapchat support.
He received security codes back from 571 women that allowed him to access the accounts of at least 59 women and download their nude or semi-nude photos, prosecutors said.
Svara advertised on Reddit and other online forums that he could hack Snapchat accounts and provide content "for you or trade," according to charging documents.
Prosecutors said he was hired in 2020 by former Northeastern University coach Steve Waithe to hack the accounts of women he had coached or had other personal relationships with for $50.
Waithe was sentenced in 2024 to five years in prison for schemes to dupe young women into sending him nude photos or to steal such images from them. Prosecutors at the time said he perpetrated his scheme against 56 women nationally.
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Cynthia Osterman and Shri Navaratnam)
