ALBANY, NEW YORK – Nicholas Faber, age 25, of Rochester, New York, was sentenced today to serve 36 months in prison for computer fraud and aggravated identity theft in connection with his hacking of online social media accounts and theft of nude images of dozens of female victims.
The announcement was made by Assistant Attorney General Kenneth A. Polite, Jr.; Acting United States Attorney Antoinette T. Bacon; Janeen DiGuiseppi, Special Agent in Charge of the Albany Field Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI); and State University of New York-Plattsburgh Police Chief Patrick Rascoe.
As part of his guilty plea on February 8, 2021, Faber admitted that from about 2017 to 2019, he worked with co-conspirator Michael Fish to access the school email accounts of dozens of female college students and then used information from those school email accounts to gain access to the victims’ social media accounts. Faber then stole, and traded online with others, private nude photographs and movies stored in the victims’ social media accounts. Also, as a result of Faber’s crimes, the university had to allocate money and staff to identifying compromised accounts, reviewing computer and server access logs, resetting passwords, and notifying students and parents.
Faber obtained his undergraduate degree from SUNY-Plattsburgh, graduating in 2017.
United States District Judge Mae A. D’Agostino also imposed a 3-year term of supervised release, which will start after Faber is released from prison, and ordered him to pay $35,430 in restitution to SUNY-Plattsburgh and a $200 special assessment.
Fish pled guilty to computer hacking, aggravated identity theft and child pornography offenses on May 19, 2020, and is scheduled to be sentenced on November 3, 2021.
This case was investigated by the FBI with substantial assistance from the SUNY-Plattsburgh Police Department. Deputy Chief Michael Stawasz from the Department of Justice Criminal Division’s Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section, and Assistant U.S. Attorneys Joshua R. Rosenthal and Wayne A. Myers, prosecuted the case.
Giving Back to the Community through a variety of venues & initiatives.
Training and seminars for Federal, State, and Local Law Enforcement Agencies.
Help us combat the proliferation of sexual exploitation crimes against children.