Steve Waithe, a former faculty monitor and area jumps coach with Northeastern College, Penn State College and the College of Tennessee, has been sentenced to 5 years in jail for establishing faux social media and emails in an try and trick his athletes into sending him nude images of themselves.
The 31-year-old was sentenced Wednesday to 5 years behind bars, pleading responsible to 12 counts of wire fraud, one depend of conspiracy to commit pc fraud and one depend of pc fraud. He was additionally discovered responsible of cyberstalking one sufferer by means of textual content messages and Instagram, in addition to by hacking into her Snapchat account.
On account of an #FBI Boston investigation, former @Northeastern monitor coach Steve Waithe was sentenced in the present day to 5 years in jail for sextortion, cyberstalking, and cyber fraud schemes focusing on over 100 ladies. https://t.co/CQR27k1v0Z pic.twitter.com/D90QMPSaIq
— FBI Boston (@FBIBoston) March 6, 2024
Waithe reportedly requested for the telephones of his feminine athletes so he may use them to movie the ladies’s type in apply and at meets. In response to a press launch from america Legal professional’s Workplace in Massachusetts, Waithe was seen “scrolling by means of” athletes’ telephones on a number of events.
Prosecutors mentioned he additionally made the faux social media accounts utilizing the names of two feminine personas “Katie Janovich” and “Kathryn Svoboda” to contact ladies, saying he had discovered compromising images of them on-line. He would then supply to assist the ladies get the images eliminated, asking them to ship extra nude or semi-nude images that he may use for “reverse picture searches.”
Prosecutors mentioned Waithe “left behind a devastating path riddled actually with dozens of victims,” and referred to as for him to be jailed for 84 months, together with the 17 months he has already served since his arrest in 2021, together with 36 months of supervised launch. They accused him of getting images from greater than 50 victims and making an attempt to get them from one other 72. In response to The Boston Globe, a half-dozen of his victims spoke on the sentencing, some utilizing their first names and plenty of showing near tears.
Waithe was a former NCAA All-American triple-jumper at Penn State, the place he went on to win a number of Massive Ten convention titles and a silver medal on the 2014 North American, Central American and Caribbean Championships (NACAC) in Kamloops, B.C.
After serving his sentence, Waithe will likely be banned from teaching on the collegiate degree and will likely be listed on the banned coaches listing by the U.S. Heart for Secure Sport.
