By Nate Raymond
July 21 (Reuters) – An Illinois man was sentenced on Tuesday to more than six years in prison after admitting he hacked the Snapchat accounts of hundreds of women in order to steal any nude or semi-nude photos they had, which he then kept, sold or traded on the internet.
Kyle Svara, 27, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy in Boston to 76 months in prison after pleading guilty to charges arising 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.
The sentence was confirmed by a spokesperson for U.S. Attorney Leah Foley, whose office prosecuted Svara.
A lawyer for Svara did not respond to requests for comment. His attorneys in court papers had said he has “profound remorse and shame for his actions,” which they say took place during a period of isolation when he was a student at the University of Illinois, at home during the COVID-19 lockdown.
According to prosecutors, Svara from May 2020 to February 2021 used anonymized, internet-based phone numbers to send text messages to more than 1,500 women posing as the support team for the Snap-operated social media platform.
Hundreds of people responded to Svara’s phishing text messages with security codes that would allow him to access their Snapchat accounts, which he did in the cases of at least 517 women, prosecutors said.
That allowed him to download nude or semi-nude photos stored on the accounts of at least 59 women, prosecutors said.
He not only kept photos for himself but also advertised his hacking services online, leading him to be paid $50 by former Northeastern University coach Steve Waithe to hack the accounts of women including those he had coached to steal content.
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 have said he victimized at least 56 women nationally.
Svara pleaded guilty in February to computer fraud and aggravated identity theft charges as well as making a false statement to law enforcement about having no interest in child pornography, which was also found on his online accounts.
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Chris Reese)
