Detailed in a civil lawsuit filed Wednesday in Alameda County, a widening scandal involving the alleged violation of students’ privacy by former University of Michigan football co-offensive coordinator Mike Weiss has enveloped California State University, East Bay.
The suit alleges that CSU East Bay failed to protect its students from Weiss’s reported hacking of the private data of more than 150,000 student-athletes across the country, including at least one CSU East Bay athlete identified in court filings as Jane Doe, to procure “personal, intimate digital photographs and videos,” according to a U.S. Department of Justice indictment.
Attorney Megan Bonanni, with the law firm Pitt McGehee Palmer Bonanni & Rivers, and attorney Lisa Esser-Weidenfeller, with the law firm Sommers Schwartz, are representing student-athletes who’ve allegedly had their personal data breached. They jointly filed the civil suit.
“What we’re really trying to do here is not just compensating these victims for this injury but also creating change at these schools. We are calling for policies to protect student information,” Bonanni said. “This should never happen to any students again.”
CSU East Bay did not respond to numerous inquiries by Bay Area News Group for comment.
On March 20, the Department of Justice charged Weiss with 14 counts of unauthorized access to computers and 10 counts of aggravated identity theft as part of an alleged conspiracy to hack into student-athletes’ social media accounts. Weiss allegedly gained unauthorized access to the private information of more than 150,000 student athletes from more than 100 colleges and universities between 2015 and January 2023, according to the indictment.
“Weiss primarily targeted female college athletes. He researched and targeted these women based on their school affiliation, athletic history, and physical characteristics,” the March 20 court filing states. “His goal was to obtain photos and videos never intended to be shared beyond intimate partners.”
Few universities have notified student-athletes and alumni of the breach of their data, and many victims failed to respond to the Department of Justice’s messages because they believed they were “scams” based on their standardized format, according to Bonanni. As news of Weiss’s alleged crimes have spread, however, student-athletes and alumni have sought help in seeking justice against Weiss and their respective colleges.
“As far as we know, only one university, since this came to light, has alerted their students that their information may have been compromised,” Esser-Weidenfeller said. “People are going back in their emails and their deleted emails and finding these DOJ notices that are very, very real.”
Last week, Bonanni and Esser-Weidenfeller filed a preservation notice to CSU East Bay compelling the college to keep all records of student-athlete data between 2020-2022.
Bonanni said universities’ “wholesale lack of oversight of private information” to shield their students’ private photos, videos, social media accounts and other sensitive information shows a systemic failure to protect students’ private data.
“We’re just seeing the first couple layers of the onion,” Bonanni said. “We’re learning more and more. But we are noticing, in just the clients that have reached out to us, there is a trend that he’s targeting certain schools because we’re seeing groups of people come forward.”
Bonanni and Esser-Weidenfeller have a history of working on class action lawsuits against institutions that failed to protect their members. Bonanni was a victims advocate in the case against USA Gymnastics coach Larry Nassar, who was found to have abused over 400 gymnasts. The case was settled by USA Gymnastics and the U.S. Olympic Committee for $380 million.
Esser-Weidenfeller previously represented victims of University of Michigan’s former athletic doctor Robert Anderson. The university reached a $490 million settlement in 2022 for more than 1,000 student-athletes Anderson reportedly subjected to unnecessary hernia and prostate exams during routine physicals.
“The centerpiece to these cases is the failure of an institution to protect people that gave them their trust and their belief,” Esser-Weiderfeller said. “They trusted the University of Michigan and USA Gymnastics to protect them from a predator. It’s that institutional betrayal.”
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