SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico – On October 12, 2022, United States District Court Judge Silvia Carreño Coll sentenced Iván Santell-Velázquez to 13 months in prison and two years of supervised release for cyberstalking, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2261A(2), announced W. Stephen Muldrow, U.S. Attorney for the District of Puerto Rico. The defendant plead guilty on July 13, 2022. According to the parties’ stipulation of facts, Santell-Velázquez, while a student at the University of Puerto Rico at Cayey, sent unauthorized emails to faculty, administration, and students under the moniker “Slay3r_r00t”. Santell-Velázquez targeted over 100 student email accounts and used phishing and spoofing schemes to successfully break into multiple university e-mail accounts. He also hacked into several female students’ Snapchat accounts between 2019 and 2021, some of which contained nude images that he shared with third parties who published the images online. After Santell-Velázquez broke into a victim’s Snapchat account, she began receiving harassing text messages with her intimate pictures. Nude photos stolen from the victim’s Snapchat account were also posted on Twitter and on a Facebook page. The plea agreement identified 15 women and the University of Puerto Rico as victims of Santell-Velázquez. “The prosecution of cyber criminals is a top…
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