Matt Weiss, a former Michigan and Baltimore Ravens assistant coach, pleaded not guilty to 24 counts of unauthorized access to computers and aggravated identity theft Monday at an arraignment in Detroit, according to ESPN.
In a 14-page indictment, prosecutors said Weiss, 42, gained access to the social media, email and iCloud accounts of approximately 3,300 mostly female college athletes in order to download “personal, intimate photographs that were not publicly shared.”
Weiss’ alleged crimes — which ran from 2015, during his Ravens’ tenure, until his 2023 Michigan firing — include “state torts of Invasion of Privacy” in Michigan, Maryland and Pennsylvania, the indictment states, including a separate charge in California.
Michigan fired Weiss as its co-offensive coordinator in Jan. 2023 after the university discovered he “inappropriately accessed” computer accounts inside of its football facility, Schembechler Hall.
Westmont College, which is a 1,200 student Christian liberal arts school overlooking Santa Barbara, Ca., is one of the institutions that had accounts allegedly infiltrated by Weiss.
Jason Tavarez, director of institutional resilience at the school, said the FBI contacted the victims associated with Westmont.
“Any information utilized in this investigation was done so with the consent of the victims named in this indictment,” Tavarez said.
“When I was talking to the FBI, they said that it was not just us and not just a couple of schools.”
Weiss, a married father of three and Vanderbilt alum, allegedly gained access to data via the Keffer Development Services, a third-party contractor that keeps the medical information for some 150,000 athletes at approximately 100 schools, including Westmont, according to the indictment.
Prosecutors said Weiss kept notes his victims, including “their school affiliation, athletic history, and physical characteristics” — along with notes on “their bodies and their sexual preferences” in videos and photos.
Two former female Michigan athletes, a gymnast and a soccer player, filed a class action lawsuit against Weiss, the university, its board of regents and Keffer Development Services over the alleged breach, ESPN said.
Weiss, who spent 12 seasons with the Ravens, is not charged with publishing, selling or sharing what he found, nor extorting the victims for money.
His attorney declined comment to ESPN following the arraignment.
Keffer also declined comment to ESPN.