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Michael Fish, age 27, of Albany, was sentenced to an additional 18 months in prison Wednesday, Oct. 26, in federal court in Albany after pleading guilty to obstruction of justice.
The time will be added to his original sentence of just over nine years in prison that was handed down in May 2022 following his guilty plea to charges of computer fraud and aggravated identity theft.
Fish admitted to hacking into dozens of female classmates’ school email accounts at SUNY-Plattsburgh and then using information from those accounts to access their social media accounts, according to the US Attorney’s Office in the North District.
Once in the accounts, he stole nude photos and videos of the victims and traded them with others online.
He also admitted to possessing several videos of child pornography on his laptop in 2019.
The hackings occurred between 2016 and 2019 while Fish was an undergraduate, and later a law student, at the school, prosecutors said.
A second man, Nicholas Faber, age 25, of Rochester, was given a three-year prison sentence in 2021 after pleading guilty to computer fraud and aggravated identity theft and admitting that he took part in Fish’s scheme.
Because of the crimes, the university spent thousands of dollars and allocated staff to identify compromised accounts, resetting passwords, and notifying students and parents.
As part of his sentence, Fish was ordered to pay more than $35,000 in restitution to the school and will have to serve 15 years of supervised release.
The obstruction of justice charge arose after Fish submitted seven fraudulent character letters to the court during sentencing proceedings in December 2019.
Prosecutors said the letters were meant to deceive the court into handing down a lighter sentence.
Fish admitted that he doctored four letters, including one from a priest, and fabricated another three letters, including ones that were supposedly from his mother and grandparents.
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