U.S. prosecutors have charged an Illinois man with orchestrating a phishing operation that allowed him to hack the Snapchat accounts of nearly 600 women to steal private photos and sell them online.
Between May 2020 and February 2021, 26-year-old defendant Kyle Svara allegedly used various social engineering tactics to obtain victims’ emails, phone numbers, and Snapchat usernames.
This info allowed Svara to gain access to their Snapchat accounts by texting more than 4,500 targets requesting access codes while impersonating Snap representatives, successfully harvesting the credentials of approximately 570 victims.
Svara allegedly accessed at least 59 accounts without permission and downloaded compromising images. After, he allegedly advertised his hacking services on platforms including Reddit, offering to “get into girls snap accounts” for clients or trade the stolen content.
“He directed potential co-conspirators to reach out to him on other, more secure channels like the encrypted messaging application Kik,” according to court documents.
One of his clients was Steve Waithe, a former Northeastern University track and field coach who hired Svara to hack the Snapchat accounts of students at Northeastern University and members of Northeastern’s Women’s Track and Field or Soccer teams.
Waithe was sentenced in March 2024 to five years in prison for sextortion, cyberstalking, and cyber fraud after targeting at least 128 women.
Beyond paid hacking jobs, prosecutors said that Svara also independently targeted students at Colby College in Maine and women in Plainfield, Illinois.
Svara faces charges of aggravated identity theft, wire fraud, computer fraud, and making false statements related to child pornography and will appear in federal court in Boston on February 4th.
The charges carry significant penalties, with aggravated identity theft requiring a minimum two-year sentence, while wire fraud allows up to
20 years imprisonment. Computer fraud and conspiracy charges also carry maximum five-year sentences, and the false statements charge carries a maximum of eight years.
Federal investigators are asking potential victims and anyone with additional information about the case to contact the FBI via this online form.
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