Massachusetts 19-year-old pleading guilty to stealing, extorting teacher and student private data

BOSTON, Mass. (AP) — A Massachusetts college student will plead guilty to stealing millions of students’ and teachers’ private data from two U.S. education tech companies and extorting it for ransom, the U.S. attorney’s office said.

Assumption University student Matthew Lane, 19, is accused of using stolen login credentials to access the computer network of a software and cloud storage company serving school systems in the U.S. and abroad, according to U.S. Attorney for the District of Massachusetts Leah B. Foley.

PowerSchool was not named in the court filings, but a source familiar with the case confirmed the company’s involvement.

According to court records, Lane is then alleged to have threatened the release of 60 million students’ and 10 million teachers’ names, phone numbers, Social Security numbers, residential addresses and medical histories if the company did not pay a ransom of approximately $2.85 million in Bitcoin.

Foley said Lane’s actions “instilled fear in parents that their kids’ information had been leaked into the hands of criminals – all to put a notch in his hacking belt.”

An attorney representing Lane didn’t return a phone call from The Associated Press requesting comment on Wednesday. Lane, of Sterling, Mass., faces counts of cyber extortion conspiracy, cyber extortion and unauthorized access to protected computers and aggravated identity theft. A plea hearing has not yet been scheduled.

Lane is also accused of extorting a $200,000 ransom payment from another telecommunications company last spring by threatening to release customer data.

“Matthew Lane apparently thought he found a way to get rich quick, but this 19-year-old now stands accused of hiding behind his keyboard to gain unauthorized access to an education software provider to obtain sensitive data which was used in an attempt to extort millions of dollars,” said Kimberly Milka, Acting Special Agent in Charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Boston Division.