Cyberstalking case involving SUNY Geneseo student closed, man sentenced

A New York City man who admitted to illegally accessing the Snapchat account of a SUNY Geneseo student, as well as hundreds of others, was sentenced to six months in prison on Dec. 1 2021. 

Per U.S. Attorney James P. Kennedy, David Mondore, 30, pleaded guilty to “accessing a protected computer without authorization and, by means of such conduct, furthering the intended fraud and obtaining anything of value,” a charge that carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.  

According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Department of Justice, Mondore illegally gained access to, and control of, at least 300 Snapchat accounts between Jul. 2018 and Aug. 2020. After doing so, Mondore located and saved nude images of the victims saved in their “My Eyes Only” folder to his own phone.  

Mondore admitted to using past victims’ Snapchat accounts to access his next victim’s account. He typically sent messages from his past victim’s account to Snapchat accounts with mutual friends, asking for their login information under the ruse that the first victim wanted to check to see if a mutual friend of theirs had blocked them.  After obtaining their username and password, Mondore told the victim he needed a PIN number to login on his device, the same PIN number that would unlock the victim’s “My Eyes Only” folder. After obtaining their information, Mondore changed the account’s password and used the account to scam another victim.  

History major senior Natalie Claus was one of Mondore’s victims on Dec. 5 2019. According to Claus, she was targeted in the same way Mondore typically obtained login information.

“A friend of a friend had messaged me on Snapchat, asking if they could use my login information to see if our mutual friend had blocked them,” Claus said. “I was like, sure; we had mutual friends, and there's no reason for me not to trust this person. I just wasn't thinking, and I also didn't think anything of it because I used to give my login information to people all the time back when keeping a snap streak was my top priority.”  

According to Claus, an hour later one of her nude pictures had been sent to 116 of her contacts without her permission or knowledge. The photo was subsequently screenshotted and shared with an unknown number of people, several of whom were fellow Geneseo students. The photo was sent to a group chat containing Geneseo students, but the identity of the student who shared the image was never determined. She did not know that her pictures had been shared until a friend mentioned it to her.  

Claus said, “[My friend Cassidy] was walking past me in Bailey, and she said, ‘Cute picture, just be careful who you send that to.’ And I had no idea what the hell she was talking about.” 

According to Claus, she will never forget how she felt in that moment.  

“I will never forget the look on Cassidy’s face; pure horror is the best way to describe it, I think. It was kind of like in a movie, like how the music slows down and you hear a ringing noise and everything's in slow motion. It literally felt like that, [realizing what had happened,]” she said.  

When Claus realized what had happened, she found that her Snapchat login information had been changed and she was unable to access her account.  

“I ran back over to my phone and tried to get into my snapchat account. I couldn't, and I realized that I was locked out. They had changed my password, the email associated with it, and they had turned on two factor authentication.”

Claus immediately took steps to get her Snapchat account back, explaining the situation to University Police Department (UPD) officers.  According to Claus, the Geneseo Police Department (GPD) declined to take the case, as they believed it could be handled solely by UPD.  

After speaking with the Geneseo Title IX Office, a NY State Police detective took Claus’ statement and evidence from her phone and sent the case to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).  The FBI was interested in the case and agreed to investigate, as well as update Claus on the progression of the case.

In Aug. of 2020, the FBI enacted a search warrant and arrested Mondore, with Mondore pleading guilty in Jun. of 2021. 

In an interview prior to the sentencing trial on Dec. 1 2021, Claus said that she felt exhausted and alone being the only of Mondore’s hundreds of victims to speak at the sentencing.  

“I'm just so drained. I just want this to be over. It's gotten better as I've gotten older, but I still can't really walk across campus without wondering who's seen [the nude photo]. It's absolutely exhausting being constantly paranoid and anxious, but the fact that people took screenshots of it and shared it with people is humiliating. It's absolutely humiliating.”

Of Geneseo’s response to the incident, Claus said that she felt disappointed in UPD and uncomfortable speaking to the male UPD officers that took her first statement.

She said, “I wish UPD would have female officers at night and on weekends. I hated disclosing [the incident] to two male officers, one of whom came off as very judgmental. It was awful. But I know so many people who would disclose something like that [had female officers responded].” 

In addition, Claus also expressed disappointment and frustration over how the Title IX Office handled the dissemination of the nude photo to several Geneseo students.  

“When I found out that the image had been screenshotted and shared, I went to [former Title IX Coordinator Tamara Kenney]. I said, ‘This is what happened, here’s the names of the people involved, the person who told me about [the image being shared]’, I gave her everything. She didn't do anything; she didn't write it down and she didn't file the complaint. I don't know how Tamara didn't think that this was her business. That's literally the whole point of Title IX and she didn't even bother writing it down and filing it. So, there was no record of me even having that conversation with her. I have nothing nice to say about how Tamara Kenney handled the Title IX Office. Nothing. Especially with how she handled this whole Snapchat thing.”

According to Claus, Kenney made no effort to file an incident report or do anything to stop the dissemination of her photo around campus by Geneseo students, and the students who were aware that the image had been shared in a group chat were not interested in helping the case. 

“I went to Marcus Foster, the new Title IX Coordinator, last year. I asked, ‘So this kind of slipped my mind but was this complaint ever filed?’ Foster checked and [Kenney] never filed it. And by that point, a year had gone by and the two people involved, that were friends at the time, are no longer friends and they could not put their own petty damn differences aside to help the literal victim of a crime. God forbid they be cooperative. It's disgusting. It's absolutely disgusting. They know who they are. They've both graduated by this point, but I don't know how the hell they walk around with this on their conscience.” 

Claus stated that she wants other survivors of sexual assault or harassment like hers to know that it was not their fault. 

“It's not your fault. If someone hacks your account and steals images like this and leaks them, it's not your fucking fault. In all sorts of sexual harassment and sexual assault, the victims are the ones who get judged and ridiculed and blamed. I'm sure there is at least one other person on this campus who has had their nude stolen who refused to come forward because they didn't want to be judged. You don't need to be ashamed. You shouldn't be ashamed for what happened.” 

Current Title IX Coordinator Marcus Foster urges students to be careful with their information online in light of events like this. 

“I think students should be very intentional with who they add on social media and on their different platforms. I think setting necessary boundaries and not providing this kind of contact information to anyone and everyone is a good rule of thumb. Making sure that your passwords are not similar across the board and that you have unique characters within the password is definitely helpful,” Foster said. 

Senior Information Security Analyst Valerie Smith provided ideas and resources on how students can protect themselves and their information online.  

“I think there's probably a decent amount of risk online [for Geneseo students], because college students are in new situations all the time. They are outside of the bubble that you spent the first 18 years of your life and with a lot of new technology thrown in their faces every day, all that increases your attack surface. I would say first, definitely enable multi factor authentication on any account that offers it, and secondly strong, unique passwords and not reusing passwords across all your accounts,” Smith said. 

Smith provided resources that Geneseo students can use to help keep themselves safe online, such as the password manager 1Password, which generates and keeps track of your passwords across all your accounts, and the CIT help desk, which can help with any technology-related issues that Geneseo students might have.  These resources are both available through the Geneseo wiki.

Claus firmly rejects the idea that what happened to her, and hundreds of other women, was a cybersecurity issue.

“CIT apparently tried to make this a cybersecurity thing and use my case as an example of how to be more secure online. There are over 300 individuals that he violated like me. He knew what he was doing, and there was nothing I could have done. He knew what he was doing, and he knew how to do it in a way that wouldn't raise suspicion. This wasn’t a cybersecurity issue. It never was, it never will be. This is, in so many ways, a misogyny issue. [Mondore] took photos of over 300 women, without consent. It’s an issue of being seen as an object, as somebody’s property, even by someone you’ve never even fucking met.” 

In an email statement after the sentencing, Claus stated that she felt that Mondore’s verdict of six months was not fair to her or to any of the women that he violated. 

“The recommended sentence was 24 to 30 months, so the fact that he was only sentenced to six months in prison is honestly heartbreaking. I broke it down, that means he was only sentenced to 14.6 hours in prison per victim. How is that justice? It doesn't seem right to me, especially when you consider he only needs to serve 85% of that sentence. I'm worth 14.6 hours. He mentioned in his statement to the court that I probably think he's a monster. I want it to be made clear that I don't. That lets him off too easily. He's a man. He's a human who hurt another human. That's what makes it scary. That's what makes it hurt so badly. This doesn't feel like justice.”