Student sentenced to one year in prison for rigging election votes

matt weaver

22-year-old Matthew Weaver is no longer a student at California State University San Marcos; he’s now doing a one year course at California State Prison for hacking his school election. Apparently, Weaver was hell bent on becoming the next student body president, so he sought out to rig the votes and did something even stupider after being caught.

Weaver derived a plan to steal over 700 student passwords and identities, and later used them to vote for himself in the election. However, on the day of election, the school noticed hundreds of votes coming from this single IP address, which was no doubt surprising. The school contacted the police, Weaver was later caught at home around his computer.

Here’s where things got really interesting and really stupid. After being caught, Weaver and a friend hacked a plan where they created fake Facebook profiles of students talking about rigging the votes in hopes to pin the crime on the innocent, unfortunately, that plan didn’t work out.

In what way did Weaver believe his little last minute plan would work? It couldn’t have since investigators had his IP address, and all the fake Facebook student profiles friended each other on the same day. He should have gotten more than a year behind bars; furthermore, his accomplice friend should also spend time in prison.

We’re still trying to get our heads around why someone would go through this trouble to become student body president. This should give us all an insight on what really goes on during political elections.

The whole problem cost California State University San Marcos $40,000, however; Weaver is required to repay that amount.

[via LA Weekly]

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