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SAN MARCOS, Calif. — A former student body president candidate at Cal State-San Marcos is facing jail time after trying to rig the election.
Matthew Weaver, 22, was sentenced to a year in prison after stealing more than 700 student identities and passwords to use to vote for himself in March 2012. He was a business student in his junior year when he set forth his plan to win the election.
Using three keyloggers, Weaver secretly recorded keystrokes on 19 campus computers, ultimately stealing about 745 passwords to cast more than 630 ballots for himself.
He was ultimately caught, according to U-T San Diego, when computer technicians became suspicious of a user casting vote after vote. The technicians were watching using remote access and saw the same user log in to a university official’s email to read an email from a student reporting she couldn’t vote. As it turns out, Weaver had already voted for the student.
In the final stretch of student voting, officials noticed hundreds of votes coming from the same IP address, according to court documents. The IP address was traced to a classroom where officials found Weaver and keyloggers stashed in his backpack.
- Wire fraud
- Unauthorized access to a computer
- Identity theft
However, Weaver’s plan didn’t end at stealing the passwords. With a friend’s help, Weaver created Facebook pages under the name of real students and tried to pin the crime on them. He then posted made-up conversations about rigging the election, in hopes to draw attention to someone other than himself, Gizmodo reports.
It was that deflection of blame that made the situation worse, Judge Larry Burns told U-T San Diego.
“That’s the phenomenal misjudgement I can’t get around,” he said. “He’s on fire for this crime, and then he pours gasoline on it to try to cover it up.”
Weaver later pleaded guilty to three federal charges: wire fraud, unauthorized access to a computer and identity theft. During his sentencing hearing, Weaver said he had learned a hard lesson and called his behavior “childish, foolish and arrogant.”
Photo credit: U-T San Diego
