News

Frat Boy Steals School Election, Gets a Year in Jail

by Julia Black

Remember that movie Election, where Reese Witherspoon plays a crazy-eyed overachiever dead set on winning her high school's petty election? Okay, now replace Reese with a delusional 22-year-old fraternity brother, and you've got yourself a real-life news story.

California State University Junior Matthew Weaver has been sentenced to a year in prison for his elaborate plot involving identity theft, computer hacking, and his likely plans to use university funding to buy a whole lot of beer.

Running for Cal State San Marco's Senior-Class President was just step one of Weaver's evil master plan. He'd also tried to talk his fellow Tau Kappa Epsilon brothers into taking the rest of the student government seats so that they could each access an annual stipend (between $1,000 to $8,000) and control the $300,000 student activities budget.

So here's the illegal part: Weaver inserted 15 keylogger devices into public computers around campus in order to steal 750 usernames and passwords, which he then pasted into a cleverly-titled spreadsheet, "Fuck ASI alpha" (ASI stands for Associated Students Inc). Using this information he cast 634 votes for himself... all from the same IP address.

Campus officials smelled something fishy and immediately dispatched an officer to arrest him in a campus computer lab. On Monday, he pled guilty to felony charges. Now, he'll spend a year in jail and a lifetime in the Dumb Criminal Hall of Fame.