Third Defendant Sentenced To Prison For Hacking Fantasy Sports And Betting Website

United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Jay Clayton, announced today that NATHAN AUSTAD, a/k/a "Snoopy," was sentenced to 18 months in prison for his role in a scheme to hack user accounts on a fantasy sports and betting website (the "Betting Website") and sell access to those accounts, resulting in losses of hundreds of thousands of dollars to the users. On December 12, 2025, AUSTAD pled guilty to one count of conspiring to commit computer intrusion before U.S. District Judge Ronnie Abrams, who imposed today's sentence.

"Nathan Austad and his co-defendants hacked an online betting website to compromise the accounts of over 60,000 users by purchasing their already stolen credentials on the darkweb and utilizing their previous passwords from other websites," said U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton. "The defendants acknowledged the federal investigation into their conduct while they were committing their crimes, even having the hubris to say the FBI could not do anything about it. They were wrong. Austad's prison sentence today demonstrates the commitment of the DOJ, the FBI, and all our federal partners to protecting our on-line markets."

According to the charging documents and other filings and statements made in court:

On or about November 18, 2022, AUSTAD and others launched a "credential stuffing attack" on the Betting Website. During a credential stuffing attack, a cyber threat actor collects stolen credentials, or username and password pairs, obtained from other large-scale data breaches of other companies, which can often be purchased on the darkweb. The threat actor then systematically attempts to use those stolen credentials to obtain unauthorized access to accounts held by the same user with other companies and providers, in order to compromise accounts where the user has maintained the same password. Here, in connection with the attack on the Betting Website, AUSTAD and his coconspirators made a series of attempts to log into the Betting Website user accounts using a large list of stolen credentials.

AUSTAD and his coconspirators successfully compromised approximately 60,000 user accounts at the Betting Website (the "Victim Accounts") through the credential stuffing attack. In some instances, AUSTAD and his coconspirators were able to add a new payment method of their own on the account (i.e., to a newly added financial account belonging to the hacker) and then use it to withdraw all the existing funds in the Victim Account to themselves, thus stealing the funds in each affected Victim Account. Using this method, AUSTAD and others stole approximately $600,000 from approximately 1,600 Victim Accounts on the Betting Website for themselves.

Access to the Victim Accounts were also sold on various websites that traffic in stolen accounts, which are frequently referred to as "Shops." AUSTAD directly controlled and profited from his own shop, which was named after the character Snoopy from the Peanuts comic strip. A photo of AUSTAD's Shop website with victim companies redacted is below:

On or about December 2, 2022, AUSTAD messaged about the existence of this investigation, "everyone shouldve been prepared for this before cashing out lol," and a coconspirator replied, "lol fbi can't do shit." On or about May 19, 2023, AUSTAD messaged about the existence of this investigation, "like we didnt know the risk when we started lol . . . everyone knows their committing fraud."

AUSTAD also controlled cryptocurrency accounts that received cryptocurrency worth approximately $465,000, including proceeds of his crimes.

AUSTAD is the third defendant to be sentenced in this investigation. On January 31, 2024, U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan sentenced Joseph Garrison to 18 months in prison. On April 16, 2026, U.S. District Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald sentenced Kamerin Stokes, a/k/a "TheMFNPlug," to 30 months in prison.

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In addition to the prison term, AUSTAD, 21, of Farmington, Minnesota, was sentenced to three years of supervised release and ordered to pay $463,684.48 in forfeiture and $1,327,061 in restitution.

Mr. Clayton praised the outstanding work of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The case is being prosecuted by the Office's Complex Frauds and Cybercrime Unit. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Kevin Mead and Micah Fergenson are in charge of the prosecution.