Student Busted In Grady Sizemore Hack

NOVEMBER 10--A Minnesota college student has been charged with hacking into the e-mail account of a former Playboy Playmate and stealing racy photos of the woman’s boyfriend, baseball star Grady Sizemore. The images of the Cleveland Indians outfielder were widely distributed on the Internet following the August 2009 online incursions.

According to a criminal complaint, Leah Ayers, a 19-year-old St. Cloud State University student, has been charged with two counts of unauthorized computer access, a misdemeanor. The Dakota County District Court complaint alleges that ex-Playmate Brittany Binger’s Yahoo e-mail account was illegally accessed four times last August.

It was during these incursions, investigators allege, that the photos of Sizemore were stolen. The series of 15 racy images had previously been sent by the 28-year-old athlete to Binger, 23.

Ayers, a sophomore who graduated from Apple Valley High School in 2009, is seen in the photo at right. She is a member of the Delta Zeta sorority at St. Cloud.

The court complaint charges that a forensic analysis of Ayers’s laptop found evidence that the computer was used to access Binger’s e-mail account, and that access “was gained by answering two security questions with regard to [Binger’s] father or her first car, or entering a password.” Binger and Sizemore are only identified in court documents by their initials.

The police review of Ayers’s laptop also revealed that it was used to view Binger’s Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace accounts.

A search warrant affidavit indicates that the probe into the theft of the Sizemore photos began when Binger reported the hacking to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. Binger told L.A. deputies that the online distribution of the images was “embarrassing and offensive” and that “they could be damaging to her career as well as the career of G.S.”

Through subpoenas to Yahoo and an internet service provider, deputies were able to determine that Binger’s account was accessed via an IP address assigned to Ayers’s father in Apple Valley, Minnesota.

When cops questioned Ayers earlier this year, she “admitted that she knew” who Binger was, according to the complaint. Ayers also “stated that she understood Yahoo.com e-mail accounts,” and was able to give a detective “directions for changing a Yahoo.com password.” Additionally, Ayers “stated that Yahoo.com uses security questions to change passwords and one of the questions the site uses is knowing where a person’s father was born.”

One of the security questions that the hacker answered to change the password in Binger’s account was the city where her father was born. That information, a detective noted, was available to “anyone viewing B.N.B’s Facebook account.” Binger is pictured at left.

The complaint also notes that when investigators searched Ayers’s home in April, her laptop was not there. She told police that the computer was being repaired at St. Cloud's student help desk. However, investigators subsequently determined that Ayers had not actually brought the laptop in for repairs until two days after she was first contacted by cops. And instead of fixing a purported faulty fan, Ayers was seeking to have the computer’s hard drive reformatted.

Ayers is scheduled for a November 29 appearance in Dakota County District Court. (9 pages)