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A former Northeastern University track and field coach has been sentenced to five years in prison for a social media scam aimed at tricking women into sharing nude photos with him.
Steve Waithe, who coached at Northeastern in Boston, Penn State University, Illinois Institute of Technology, the University of Tennessee, and Concordia University Chicago, pleaded guilty last year to 12 counts of wire fraud, one count of conspiracy to commit computer fraud and one count of computer fraud, prosecutors said. The 31-year-old Waithe also pleaded guilty to cyberstalking one victim through text messages and direct messages sent via social media, as well as by hacking into her Snapchat account, prosecutors said.
'These weren't just victims that lost some money. These were people who lost their privacy, their sense of safety and destruction of trust,' Judge Patti Saris said. 'Many of them cared for you, Mr. Waithe. and you broke their hearts. It was very much a breach of trust.'
Prosecutors said starting as early as February 2020, Waithe used the sham social media accounts to contact women, saying he had found compromising photos of them online. He would then offer to help the women get the photos removed, asking them to send additional nude or semi-nude photos that he could purportedly use for 'reverse image searches,' prosecutors said.
Steve Waithe, 31, of Chicago, admitted to creating fake social media accounts to contact track and field athletes and offering to help get rid of compromising photos
Waithe further invented at least two female personas — 'Katie Janovich' and 'Kathryn Svoboda' — to obtain nude and semi-nude photos of women under the purported premise of an 'athlete research' or 'body development' study, investigators said.
He also joined sites that allowed him to connect with others to distribute the stolen images and trade sets of images with other users.
Prosecutors said Waithe 'left behind a devastating path riddled literally with dozens of victims' and have called for him to be jailed for 84 months, including the 17 months he has already served since his arrest, along with 36 months of supervised release. They accused him getting photos from more than 50 victims and trying to get them from another 72.
'To many of the victims in this case, Steve Waithe presented himself as a
