Attorney accuses University of Michigan of ‘repeated failures’ after Matt Weiss data breach

From WDIV Local 4

ANN ARBOR, Mich. – For­mer Michi­gan Wolver­ines foot­ball assis­tant coach Matt Weiss, 42, is at the cen­ter of what attor­ney Park­er Sti­nar of Sti­nar Gould Grieco & Hens­ley said: “This is, to my under­stand­ing, the largest data breach in the his­to­ry of the Unit­ed States by an aca­d­e­m­ic insti­tu­tion.”

Beyond Weiss, Sti­nar said the Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan betrayed rough­ly 150,000 indi­vid­u­als, includ­ing stu­dent-ath­letes, by fail­ing to noti­fy them about the breach for years.

“It wasn’t until March of 2025 that their stu­dent-ath­letes became aware of the mag­ni­tude of the data breach, the mag­ni­tude of con­fi­den­tial infor­ma­tion that was accessed, and the mag­ni­tude of harms that they may have expe­ri­enced,” Sti­nar said.

Sti­nar said the uni­ver­si­ty first became aware of a cyber­se­cu­ri­ty con­cern in late 2022 when a stu­dent report­ed sus­pi­cious activ­i­ty on her per­son­al email account.

“That’s when the Uni­ver­si­ty was put on notice and began their inves­ti­ga­tion,” Sti­nar said.

How­ev­er, despite launch­ing an inves­ti­ga­tion and con­sult­ing with law enforce­ment, Sti­nar said the uni­ver­si­ty “did not alert those affect­ed,” includ­ing the orig­i­nal stu­dent who report­ed the breach, about the sever­i­ty of the sit­u­a­tion.

Read full sto­ry here.