Former Student Gets Year In Prison For College President Election Fraud

Gunkerty Jeb writes, quoting Threatpost: "A former Cal State San Marcos student was sentenced to a year in prison this week for election tampering by using keystroke loggers to grab student credentials and then vote for himself. Matthew Weaver, 22, of Huntington Beach, Calif., stole almost 750 students' identities to try and become president of the San Diego County college's student government. His plan went awry when the school's computer technicians noticed an anomaly in activity and caught Weaver with keystroke loggers as he sat in front of the suspicious computer."

Comments

Read the full article. This is NOT harmless.

[Valdrax]

Wow...just wow.
I can understand him getting kicked out of school, but freaking federal prison for a year for just messing with a STUDENT school election?!?!
[...]
This is a freaking school election...not a federal / city/state election..it is college, it means NOTHING....

Read the full article (especially the utsandiego.com link). He committed wire fraud -- the winner of the presidential election gets a $8000 stipend, and the vice-president gets $7000. He planned ahead (even putting together a PowerPoint presentation the year before for his frat brothers to run for the #2 slot) to "win" these prizes. Fraud over wire for financial gain is a serious federal crime with a maximum of 20 years in prison.

He also attempted to cover up his crime once caught *red-handed* at the machine he was entering the votes from in a computer lab by later creating Facebook profiles in other real people's names and generating a lot of fake comments intended to make it look like those people had conspired to frame him, and he sent it to local media outlets. It was stupid in way that shows how much smarter he thinks he is than the people around him.

This kid is a budding con artist. He was acting for financial motive to defraud the school, and he was willing to trash the lives of others to try to get out of paying the penalty for something he did. This kid has displayed blatant, selfish disregard for others and a willingness to hurt or exploit them for profit.

This isn't a harmless prank. These are the actions of a malicious liar with an inflated sense of his own capabilities who doesn't seem to grasp the idea that consequences should apply to him for his actions. They should have thrown the book at him. Imagine the harm he could have done if he'd waited a few more years to "ripen" as a criminal and landed himself in management somewhere.