Former Track Coach Arrested After Soliciting Nude Photos From Female Student Athletes
A former college track and field coach was arrested Wednesday in Chicago for tricking female student-athletes to send him nude pictures as well as for cyberstalking a student-athlete.
Steve Waithe, 28, has been charged by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the District of Massachusetts with one count of wire fraud and one count of cyberstalking after using fake social media accounts to trick female students into sending him photos. Waithe had served as a coach at Northeastern University in Boston but was fired after a sexual harassment investigation.
Waithe was hired at Northeastern in October 2018. He was fired in February 2019 due to “a university investigation into his inappropriate conduct toward female student-athletes.”
An investigation found that Waithe’s browsing history contained searches for how to hack Snapchat accounts and web pages with titles like, “Can anyone trace my fake Instagram account back to me?”
Waithe mainly obtained the photos by requesting to hold the victims’ phones under the pretense that he was filming them so they could work on their form.
The coach would later contact them using fake Instagram accounts and trick them into thinking he had their nude photos and could help them get the images off the internet.
"Under this pretense, it is alleged that Waithe requested additional nude or semi-nude photos that he could purportedly use for 'reverse image searches,'" the statement revealed.
Waithe also cyberstalked one female athlete and sent some of the victim’s nude photos to her boyfriend.
Waithe could face up to five years jail time for the cyberstalking charge along with three years of supervised release and a $250,000 fine. The charge of wire fraud could carry up to a 20-year sentence, three years of supervised release, and a $250,000 fine.
Waithe was scheduled for an afternoon hearing at a federal court in the Northern District of Illinois on Wednesday. He is expected to appear in a Boston court at a later date.
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