Experts warn kids being groomed to hack: ‘It is easy money even though it is dirty’ | Action News Investigation

PHILADELPHIA (WPVI) — The FBI has a warning about a growing concern in the digital underground: youth cybercrime.

The FBI says in the United States, the average age for all crime arrests is 37, but when it comes to cybercrime, that age plummets to 19.

Authorities say in today’s age, hacking and gaming go hand in hand, which is why criminal networks target teens to do their dirty work.

Matthew Lane began exploring the dark corners online in high school. He said it began when he started creating cheating programs while on the gaming site, Roblox.

“You realize you’re good at this thing that can make you money in a bad way. It’s easy money even though it’s dirty,” said Lane. “As a young kid, you’re like, ‘I’m going to do that.'”

Lane said he partly did it for the thrill.

“Just kind of spiraled from there, honestly. It’s a very toxic and edgy corner of the internet,” he said.

In 2024, that spiral led him and an unnamed co-conspirator to hack into the leading educational database, PowerSchool.

PowerSchool is a cloud platform used to manage student data, attendance and grades.

The hack made national headlines, with Lower Merion, Haverford and other local school districts affected.

“That gave me the most natural high ever. It’s indescribable, like the adrenaline you get from doing something like that. It’s way more than driving 120 miles per hour,” said Lane.

Armed with the personal information of tens of millions of students and teachers that included social security numbers, medical information and passwords, Lane extorted PowerSchool to pay $2.85 million in Bitcoin.

He said he spent the illicit proceeds on high-end fashion, drugs, and jewelry.

Fergus Hay, the founder of The Hacking Games, said the world is facing a critical crisis when it comes to cybercrime.

“What’s really scary and what the data shows is the vast majority of people committing the cybercrime are children,” he said.

Hay said he is on a mission to identify young, talented hackers and steer them into cybersecurity careers, not online crime, where he says grooming is rampant.

“The reason why is because the bad guys have worked out where the kids are developing their skill sets, and it’s gaming,” he said. “Now the overlap between a hack and a gamer is 100 percent. Every hacker is a gamer. “

Lane’s crimes came to a halt in 2024 when the FBI raided his Assumption University dorm room outside of Boston.

Investigators said they tracked the stolen data to a server in Ukraine.

“We saw the server had been purchased with cryptocurrency that we were able to tie Matt Lane’s true name to a financial account he had been using,” said Supervisory Special Agent Doug Doman with the FBI.

Lane pleaded guilty to cyber extortion and was sentenced to four years in prison, which he began serving earlier this year.

“I’m so thankful I got caught. I really am,” he said. “That stuff affected me so bad.”

He said when he’s released, he plans to help educate young people and prevent them from going down a path of crime.

“You should be using it not to take, but to give to the people. You know what I’m saying? They should be doing that, and I should have done that. That is what I wanna do,” he said.

Hay cautions parents to discuss the consequences of hacking with their children. He said if your child is a gamer, game with them.

“Parents need to plug in. Parents need to lock in. Parents need to understand the world that their kids are living in,” he said.