Illinois Man Sentenced In Snapchat Sex Hack Affecting 500 Women

An Illinois man has been sentenced to prison after a Snapchat hack.

Snapchat can get sketchy, and of course, any nude Snaps you send could be screenshotted.

There are a lot of reasons to not have Snapchat (such as being an adult) and this kind of situation is one reason. According to Patch, 27-year-old Kyle Svara from Oswego has been sentenced to 76 months behind bars after a Snapchat hack that affected hundreds of women and girls.

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Prosecutors determined that Svara hacked more than 500 Snapchat accounts to keep, sell, or trade nudes, including ones from underage victims.

During COVID (from May 2020-February 2021) Svara collected victims' emails, usernames, and phone numbers by posing as a representative from Snap Inc. and using anonymized phone numbers. He texted over 4,500 people to request their Snap access codes and about 570 women sent them.

To keep track of his hacking, Svara kept a spreadsheet of the victims' usernames and information, along with notes like "priority", "got in, couldn't crack meo [My Eyes Only]", "got a few", "wrong snap", and "TONS OF HOT NUDES, TRY AGAIN".

Svara advertised on internet forums like Reddit that he could "get into girls snap accounts" and provide content like nudes "for you or trade".

Victims included women from Plainfield, along with his neighbors, high school classmates, family friends, and friends of his wife and sister, along with a group of students at Colby College in Maine and Northeastern University in Boston.

Initially, Svara claimed he didn't know anything about hacking Snapchat but he was found to have 530 images and 600 videos of child sexual abuse in his Meta account.

He approached some victims on Instagram. One user asked him in a DM: "Does it bother you that I'm underage? I'm not 18" to which Svara replied "Oh okay. More live pics?:)"

One of Svara's co-conspirators was former Northeastern University track and field coach, Steve Waithe.