A former California State University-San Marcos student was sentenced to a year in federal prison Monday for rigging campus elections in a bid to win a student government presidency, ABC Good Morning America reports.
Matthew Weaver, 22, pleaded guilty in March to charges of wire fraud, access device fraud and unauthorized access to a computer after stealing the passwords of more than 700 student email accounts and using them to vote for himself and friends.
The U.S. District Attorney's Office filed the complaint against Weaver, maintaining he proposed that he and four fraternity brothers run for student government office before illegally obtaining students votes.
"If privacy is to mean anything in a digital age, it has to be protected," U.S. Attorney Laura Duffy said. "A 12-month sentence adequately warns men and women like Weaver that they cannot hide from the consequences of their actions behind youth or privilege."
Weaver used keyloggers, software that can save a computer's keystrokes, to record passwords which he then used to hack into the electronic voting system.
According to the GMA report, university officials noticed the voting discrepancy when more than 150 votes were cast from the same IP address and 259 from another IP address.
Cal State San Marcos student newspaper The Cougar Chronicle reports that officials were alerted to the illegal voting during the last hour of the election and tracked the activity to an on-campus computer. A campus police officer found Weaver sitting at the computer and arrested him.
According to the Chronicle, Weaver's intended position receives an $8,000-a-year stipend and oversees a $300,000 budget.