A former Louisville Metro Police officer has admitted to being involved in a conspiracy to stalk and blackmail young women online and break into their Snapchat accounts to steal naked photos and videos.
Brian Wilson, 36, initially pleaded guilty in June, but details of the conspiracy have come to light. now released.
According to prosecutors, Wilson was involved in hacking the Snapchat accounts of 25 women and published several ostensibly stolen photos and videos.
What makes this case particularly noteworthy is that the blackmailer was able to exploit privileged access to police tools to hack into the young woman’s account and steal intimate snaps.
Despite leaving the police force in June 2020, Wilson continued to have access to Accurint. controversial and powerful data-gathering tools – to mine information about his potential victims.
Accurint “scans millions of websites, including hundreds of social networking sites, and the deep web to reveal information about individuals and the companies and organizations they may be associated with.” claims to be possible.
Tools like Accurint are clearly useful to law enforcement, but they shouldn’t be used by anyone leaving the military, and their login credentials should be revoked.
Information that Wilson gathered through unauthorized access to Accurint was shared with hackers to break into his account.
Wilson texted the victim and threatened to share the stolen sexually explicit images and videos with family, friends and colleagues unless they provided more sexually explicit material.
Below is an example of a text exchange Wilson had with one of his victims.
Wilson: I would like to know which photo you would like to use as the focal point of the collage I am making… (the photo was attached)
victim: Who is this?
Wilson: are you cool i post em I tell you, everyone will love them!
victim: how did you get these?
Wilson: …I intended to send your photos to your parents, brothers, grandparents, sisters, friends, Facebook, porn hubs, employers, etc. but I will gladly keep all of this between you and me (And I’ll tell you who sent it to me) ) It’s a win-win if you take me out of the drama and promise to show me a few more pics…
On at least one occasion, Wilson actually sent sexually explicit photos and videos to the victim’s employer. According to US Attorney Michael A. Bennett, this resulted in a near termination of the victim’s employment.
It is clear that Wilson’s actions caused psychological trauma to the victim. Not only were they unwitting victims of a blackmail scheme that threatened to publish private photos online, but he called them “dirty sluts,” “whores,” and “complaints” in text exchanges. is.
One of the victims told the court she suffered months of harassment and was horrified. “Brian Wilson completely turned my life upside down,” she said.
Wilson is currently serving a total sentence of 30 months in federal prison.
My advice to Snapchat users is to increase the security of your account. Enabling two-factor authentication (2FA)and make sure they always use unique and hard-to-crack passwords.
And of course, our advice to organizations is to revoke login credentials whenever someone leaves the company.
