On Thursday, a Puerto Rico judge sentenced a former University of Puerto Rico (UPR) student to 13 months in prison for hacking over a dozen email and Snapchat accounts of female colleagues.
The defendant, Iván Santell-Velázquez (aka Slay3r_r00t), pled guilty to cyberstalking on July 13, admitting to targeting more than 100 students.
“This individual engaged in phishing and spoofing schemes to steal information,” said U.S. Attorney Muldrow.
“He harassed numerous women with the nude photos he stole from them, and in some cases, he published them.”
Besides targeting dozens of student email accounts, he successfully hacked into multiple university email accounts and collected personal information in spoofing and phishing attacks.
Between 2019 and 2021, Santell-Velázquez hacked several female students’ Snapchat accounts and stole nude photos that later ended up online after he shared them with others.
In at least one instance, he used nude images stolen from one of his victim’s Snapchat accounts to harass her via text messages. The defendant also shared the stolen photos on Twitter and Facebook.
Victim list includes 15 female UPR students
The plea agreement says that, in total, Santell-Velázquez’s victim list includes 15 University of Puerto Rico female students.
“Cyberstalking can have a major impact on its victims, which can range from suicidal ideation, fear, anger, depression, to PTSD,” said FBI Special Agent in Charge Joseph González.
“This is why, at the FBI we are committed to investigating these terrible crimes and we urge the public to report incidents to law enforcement immediately.”
U.S. District Court Judge Silvia Carreño Coll sentenced the defendant on Thursday to 13 months in prison and two years of supervised release for cyberstalking.
In June, a California man who hacked thousands of Apple iCloud accounts was imprisoned for 8 years after pleading guilty to conspiracy and computer fraud.
Until caught, he gained unauthorized access to hundreds of U.S. targets’ iCloud accounts and collected 3.5 terabytes of stolen content from over 500 victims on cloud and physical storage, with roughly 1 terabyte of it dedicated to stolen nude photos and videos.
