Last week in a Detroit federal court, former Michigan quarterbacks coach Matt Weiss pleaded not guilty to all 24 counts against him, while his former boss is still struggling to make sense of it.
“Just really shocking,” John Harbaugh told the Detroit Free Press at the NFL league meetings in Palm Springs, Fla. “Shocking. Surprising. Didn’t see that one coming. Found out about it the same time everybody else did. Don’t know what to make of it. Just feel really bad for the people involved, that were affected by it. Especially his family and then the people that were victims of that. I love (Weiss’ wife) Melissa and the kids. It’s really just a disturbing situation.”
Weiss spent 2021-22 as Michigan's quarterbacks coach, seasons that saw the Wolverines win the Big Ten and reach the College Football Playoff. He came to Michigan after spending 2009-20 working for John Harbaugh with the Baltimore Ravens.
Michigan placed Weiss on administrative leave on Jan. 17, 2023 after the U-M police department began investigating "computer access crimes" weeks prior in December. The Wolverines fired Weiss three days later, and the case largely sat dormant for more than two years until March 20, when the US Justice Department indicted him on 10 counts of aggravated identity theft and 14 counts of unauthorized access to computers.
Beginning in 2015, the Justice Department alleges Weiss used a third-party vendor to access intimate photos of thousands of people, most of whom were female college students. Experts state Weiss's case is unusual in that typically hacking scandals of this scale involve some sort of financial component, where Weiss's does not.
"It is not a ton of victims for someone overseas running a hacking ring," lawyer Carrie Goldberg told ESPN. "But in terms of a single individual not trying to financially profit, this is the most prolific example I've seen."
“It was after the TCU game that we — that I found out, we found out, that there was allegations,” Jim Harbaugh said Monday. “And you said it, I mean indictment, that's not a word that — sympathy for the victims and for Matt's family. It’s shocking.”
As always, stay tuned to The Scoop for the latest.