Audio Transcript

Mollie Halpern: It’s a case about greed, power, and deceit. I’m Mollie Halpern, and this is Gotcha, the FBI’s closed case of the week. Former student Matthew Weaver rigged a student body election so he could win the presidency and control a $300,000 budget at Cal State University San Marcos. Supervisory Special Agent Terry Reed…

Terry Reed: Weaver’s actions were an outrageous betrayal of trust, especially for someone who sought to represent his peers as part of the student body.

Halpern: University police caught Weaver casting votes for himself using a campus computer. That’s when they called in the FBI. Case Agent Charles Chabalko says a search warrant was executed on Weaver’s laptop and a forensic examination of it was conducted.

Charles W. Chabalko: We located a file saved on there that had over 750 students’ passwords and user IDs.

Halpern: To steal identities, Weaver had installed keyloggers—electronic devices which are barely visible—on 19 campus computers.

Chabalko: Every keystroke from that keyboard is actually stored on that keylogger. And he would retrieve those loggers and then download the information.

Halpern: Weaver was sentenced to one year in prison on several charges, including wire fraud.