Illinois man pleads guilty to hacking hundreds of Snapchat accounts to steal nude photos

A 27-year-old Illinois man pleaded guilty to several charges related to a campaign of hacks involving the Snapchat accounts of about 600 women.

Kyle Svara of Oswego, Illinois is facing decades in prison after pleading guilty to aggravated identity theft, wire fraud, computer fraud, conspiracy to commit computer fraud and false statements related to child pornography.

His sentencing is scheduled for May 18 and the charges carry a cumulative maximum sentence of 32 years in prison.

Svara was charged in December with using social engineering attacks and other methods to gain access to the Snapchat accounts of young women and girls. 

In 2020 and 2021, he posed as a representative of Snapchat and contacted 570 women demanding security access codes that were prompted by his initial attempts to break into their accounts.

He used the codes to access the accounts of at least 59 women and downloaded nude or semi-nude photographs from their accounts. Svara went on to sell the images online and trade them with others on internet forums. 

Svara marketed his tactics to others on the internet, offering to break into people’s Snapchat accounts for a fee. 

He was hired in at least one instance by Steve Waithe, a former track and field coach at Northeastern University, to hack into the Snapchat accounts of women on the team or others Waithe knew personally. Waithe has since been convicted and sentenced to five years in prison on charges of wire fraud and cyberstalking. 

Svara was hired by several others to hack into women’s accounts but also targeted women and girls in Plainfield, Illinois and Colby College in Waterville, Maine.

Svara initially lied to investigators when he was pressed about his actions, denying accessing or selling child sexual abuse material. The FBI and DOJ urged anyone who may have been impacted by Svara’s actions to come forward. 

Last year, the DOJ indicted a former University of Michigan assistant football coach for hacking into the student athlete databases of more than 100 colleges and universities and accessing the medical information of about 150,000 people.

Weiss hacked into the “social media, email, and/or cloud storage accounts of more than 2,000 target athletes,” as well as another 1,300 students and alumni from universities across the country, prosecutors said.

“Weiss primarily targeted female college athletes. He researched and targeted these women based on their school affiliation, athletic history and physical characteristics,” the indictment said. “His goal was to obtain private photographs and videos never intended to be shared beyond intimate partners."