A Huntington Beach High School grad, who pleaded guilty in March to trying to rig a student election at Cal State San Marcos in San Diego County, was sentenced Monday in federal court to a year in federal custody.
Matthew Weaver, 22, in March 2012 tried to win the student council president election that would have given him an $8,0000 stipend and oversight of a $30,000 Associated Students Inc. annual budget.
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But campus police caught Weaver at a school computer on the last day of the four-day election with a keylogger, a small electronic device that secretly records a computer user's keystrokes.
The FBI took over the investigation that discovered Weaver had purchased three keyloggers more than a month before the election. A search of his laptop showed he'd searched for “how to rig an election” and “jail time for keylogger.” (Cue Homer: “DOH!”)
In the end, it was learned the then-third-year business student had stolen nearly 750 student passwords. San Marcos officials called it the largest identity theft case in the university's 24-year history. Weaver eventually copped to three federal charges and admitted to casting about 480 votes for himself and friends on the ballot.
The election results were tossed and a new election was called.
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OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.