An Illinois man was sentenced on Tuesday to 76 months in prison and three years of supervised release for hacking the Snapchat accounts of over 750 women to steal nude photos, which he later traded or sold online.
After being charged in December, 26-year-old defendant Kyle Svara admitted in February to having used various social engineering tactics to phish Snapchat access codes from over 750 women.
Between May 2020 and February 2021, he targeted more than 4,500 victims while posing as a representative of Snap Inc and using anonymized phone numbers.
After stealing the victims’ credentials, Svara accessed approximately 517 women’s Snapchat accounts without permission to download nude or semi-nude photos and activated two-factor authentication to lock them out of the compromised accounts.
The investigators also found that Svara distributed child sexual abuse material (CSAM), finding approximately 530 images and 600 videos depicting CSAM in his Mega account.
“When Svara was interviewed by investigators, he falsely stated that he did not know anything about hacking Snapchat,” the Justice Department said in February.
“Additionally, he falsely stated that had no interest in child pornography and had never actively sought out or accessed child sexual abuse material (CSAM). Contrary to these statements, the defendant collected, distributed and solicited CSAM.”
According to court documents, he also advertised his “services” online, trading the stolen images, offering to “get into girls snap accounts,” and asking potential clients to reach out through the Kik encrypted messaging app.
Steve Waithe, a former Northeastern University track and field coach and one of his clients, hired Svara to hack the Snapchat accounts of students at Northeastern and members of the women’s track and field and soccer teams.
After being found guilty of targeting at least 128 women and stealing thousands of explicit photos from more than 100 women, Waithe was sentenced in March 2024 to five years in prison for cyber fraud, cyberstalking, and sextortion.
Between paid hacking jobs, Svara also independently hacked into the accounts of many women in Plainfield, Illinois (including neighbors, family friends, classmates, his own personal friends), as well as students at Colby College in Waterville, Maine.
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