January 3, 2015
Dear Mr. Jay Leiderman,
My name is Sam Snow (not my actual name, but one I'm using for this letter, and I'll explain why
in a moment), and I am writing to you today in support of one of your clients, Mr. Matthew Keys.
While this letter is being submitted to you and to the court as a request for leniency, it is also being
submitted as proof that Matthew Keys did not commit the crime for which he has been accused – and
this is something I will prove in this account of what happened several years ago and with material I
will send separately.
First, let me flatly state the obvious: Matthew Keys is innocent. He never gave a username and
password for any computer system to any hacker or hacking group. He never conspired to hack his
former employer, and he never sent e-mails to any of his co-workers or the audience of the TV station
where he worked. I know he did not do any of the things for which he has been accused – because I did
them, and again this is something I can prove.
Matthew and I first met a few months after he started at the Fox station in Sacramento. We met on
a dating website in early 2009 and met in person a few months later when he moved into an apartment
in Natomas. Although Matthew struck me as being somewhat socially awkward and a little flustered on
the first few meets, I later came to know him as someone who is very funny, incredibly smart, deeply
caring and fiercely loyal to the people he cares about.
When we met in person, Matthew had just moved out of his grandma's home and was living on his
own for the first time as an adult. He seemed very excited at having a professional news job (I believe
it was his first news job ever) and his very own place. A few weeks after we had been hanging out in
person, he invited me to his apartment, and I have to say it wasn't much to look at. It was a downstairs
unit, I believe it was on the corner, and it was pretty sparsely furnished – I remember it was sort of
awkward to hang out at because he didn't have a couch in his living room for the longest time. As time
went on, I got to know him a bit better, and eventually came to realize that he was so slow when it
came to furnishing his apartment because he worked long hours at the TV station and often went back
to see his grandma on the weekend, so he was almost never at home.
Shortly after we met, Matthew and I briefly dated. It was by mutual understanding that we decided
it would be better if we stayed friends. Without getting too personal, I think it is reasonable to say that
we were looking for two different things at the time. We worked better as friends, and spent a lot of
time together after we decided that there wouldn't be a romantic relationship between us.
Matthew and I grew close in the few years that I knew him in Sacramento, to the point where he
actually gave me a spare key to his apartment so I could come over whenever I wanted to, if I needed a
break from my roommates or if I needed a place to crash for the night, or just felt like hanging out and
doing whatever. Sometimes I'd come over and cook food for us and have it ready by the time he came
home from work, which could be late. This was always a bit of a challenge because Matthew ordered in
a lot. It was not uncommon for him to have several pizza boxes in his fridge at one time, and pretty
much no other food in the apartment.
While I was cooking dinner for us one night in the middle of 2010, I remember Matthew and I
having a conversation about his work where he felt like he might have to leave the station. I remember
Matthew being very upset at the thought of having to leave – he told me he had a conversation with his

 boss, and the outcome of the conversation was that he felt it was time to move on. I could tell it
bothered him a lot, but I could also tell that he had been very stressed in the months prior to that
conversation and that work had been weighing a bit heavy on him. He said his work had gone from
being something that stressed him out to something that was affecting his health – he began taking
medication for sleeping, and I remember him saying that sometimes the stress of the job was so intense
he'd have to take a double dose just to fall asleep. He also said that there were times when he got into
pretty nasty arguments with other co-workers, and that the whole work environment had become toxic.
It was really hard to see him like this.
A few weeks after that conversation in the kitchen, Matthew told me he had left his job at the
station. He said he'd gotten into an argument with his boss during a news story and that the end result
was that he would either have to quit or he felt he'd be fired, and so he decided to quit that day. I asked
him what he was going to do, and he said he was going to get unemployment to cover his bills and that
he would start looking for a job somewhere else. He also said he was going to start using Twitter and
Facebook to cover the news on his own while he looked for a new job because he thought that might
give him and his abilities exposure to other companies. I said I thought that was a great idea and
offered to help in any way I could.
For the first few days and weeks after he left his job, I could tell something was not right. I would
ask to come over to cook dinner or just hang out, and more often than not he would say he wasn't
feeling up to it. I also remember there were times when he would be on the computer really late at night
and sleeping during the day. On the rare occasion when we did hang out, he was often sad and
depressed more than he was cheery and happy. There were times when it was a bit hard to be around
him because of the depression, but I tried my best to be a good friend.
Around the middle of November, the computer at my house crashed and was completely
inoperable. I was a few days away from getting paid, and I asked Matthew if I could come over and use
one of his computers in the meantime. At the time, he had two Macintosh computers – both were pretty
old, but one was considerably older and smaller than the other one. When my computer broke, he was
visiting with his grandma and said he had left one of his computers at home. I asked him if I could go
over to his house to use the computer, and he said that was fine, that I could use it as long as I needed
and even take it home with me if I wanted, and that I didn't need a password to log on to the computer.
When I started using his computer, I found out that nothing really required much of a password.
The login screen went straight to the desktop and almost every website I visited, like Facebook or
Gmail, would automatically log me on to one of his accounts. I later told him that probably wasn't the
best idea, that anyone could steal his laptop and mess with his accounts. He told me he wasn't too
worried about it because he only really ever used his computers for work and that it was just easier to
not have to constantly remember and type in usernames and passwords. I remember this conversation
clearly because it struck me as unusual how naïve someone so smart could be when it came to their
online security, but he dismissed my concern by saying that he was kind of a boring person and
probably wasn't too much of a target because his work wasn't high profile and he didn't work with
secret sources or anything like that. I would be willing to bet he no longer feels that way.
While I was on his computer, I started looking through some of his files. He had a handful of
work-related files on his laptop, including support e-mails with some of his co-workers where he had
helped reset usernames and passwords for the station's website. There were also a few spreadsheets
with traffic numbers and documents with web addresses and passwords. Most of the documents were
really old, but some looked like they had been updated a few months before he had quit. One document

 was about the website's content management system where people could add and edit news stories for
the website. It had a web address and a couple of passwords. Out of curiosity, I decided to try some of
the passwords to see if it worked.
When I entered the web address, there were credentials that had already been filled in. I figured
those were probably ones Matthew used for work, and I cleared them out. My guess is they probably
wouldn't have worked anyway since he hadn't worked for the station. But some of the passwords in the
document did work. Most of them were only for the Fox station in Sacramento, but a few of them were
superuser passwords for the website and the video system used by the station. One even allowed me
access into a section of the website where there were thousands of e-mail addresses for viewers of the
station, and it looked like it had recently grown because the station was running a contest where they
were giving away iPads.
Remembering how crappy Matthew had felt in losing his job, and knowing the station had not been
very kind to him, I thought of a plan where I'd e-mail customers of the station and tell them they had
been selected as a winner of the iPad contest. It was a prank that I assumed might cause a little
inconvenience for the management who had treated Matthew unfairly, but otherwise wouldn't do very
much lasting harm. I certainly didn't intend for it to turn into a huge federal case. But I digress.
Using an online spreadsheet creator, I started copying some of the e-mail addresses into a database.
I probably had around 100 by the time I was done, which was a small drop in the bucket considering
the tens of thousands of e-mail addresses that were on the website. Then, I took that list and started emailing a handful of customers saying they had been selected as a winner for the iPad contest. I sent the
e-mails from a Gmail account that was dummied up to look like it was the Fox station. I also included
the station's newsroom phone number in the message (I found it in one of the documents on Matthew's
computer). To keep my tracks hidden, I used a VPN program that Matthew had on his computer (he
told me he had a VPN subscription to watch foreign news and TV shows – in reading the FBI transcript
of his interrogation, he said the service was “Overplay” and I think that's correct).
In another document, I found e-mail addresses for various station managers and an e-mail alias for
the entire newsroom. Using a Yahoo mail account under the name of Fox Mulder (from the X-Files,
one of my favorite TV shows, and also a former Fox show, so I thought it'd be fitting), I started sending
prank e-mails to employees. I wrote in one about about I thought it was unfair that they had been letting
people go at the station through no fault of their own, and how it was going to come back to haunt them
someday. I wrote in another one about how I had gotten ahold of their customer e-mail list, and I
included a handful of e-mail addresses to prove it was legitimate.
This went on for a couple of days – I'd come over, use Matthew's laptop (usually he was out of
town; once he was in the apartment but he didn't know I was using his VPN or writing the e-mails, I
guess he assumed I was checking Facebook or something), check the Gmail, then check the Yahoo mail
and write back. Sometimes this happened during the day, sometimes it happened really late at night. I
even learned how to use parts of their CMS to do things like reset passwords, and just to screw with
some of the people there I changed the passwords of a few employees. I figured the worst thing that
would happen is they'd get a few phone calls from angry customers and they'd have to reset their
passwords a few times. I certainly didn't mean for it to get blown out of proportion the way it had and if
I had known the police or the feds would get involved I wouldn't have bothered at all.
The entire time I was doing this, I kept Matthew in the dark. Occasionally, Matthew let me take his
computer home with me, since I decided after I got paid that I would save some money to buy a nicer

 machine than the one I had before. But most of the time I worked on his computer from his house.
In early December, I got interested Wikileaks and the group Anonymous. Matthew said he didn't
know anything about Anonymous but that he knew a little bit about Wikileaks because a former friend
of his, Adrian Lamo, had turned someone in who had leaked information to Wikileaks a few years
back. Computers are a hobby of mine, and Adrian Lamo is known in computer and online circles in
Sacramento because he used to live in the area.
Both Wikileaks and Anonymous had started making the news regularly around that time because
several online merchants had stopped processing payments to Wikileaks. There was a big conspiracy
then that the reason Wikileaks was cut off had something to do with the classified documents that were
published by the site, but it was really anyone's guess. Anonymous, though, thought they had it all
figured out and threatened to attack websites like Visa and Mastercard out of revenge. I remember
following the news intensely on this issue because it was of deep interest to me.
Knowing that Matthew was doing his own journalism on the side while he continued to look for
work, I suggested to him that he look into Anonymous and maybe start reporting on them. He initially
turned down the idea, saying he wasn't too familiar with Wikileaks or Anonymous and that it wasn't
really his area of expertise. He also said he was worried that if he reported or did the wrong thing on
Anonymous they might retaliate against him – he didn't know much about them but knew enough to
know that they were hackers, or at least had that reputation.
I told him it wasn't much of an issue – I had experience with 4chan and that's where some of the
Anonymous culture sort of started – and that I'd help him out as a source but that I didn't want to be
included in any of his reporting. He said he would do some more research and think about it. The next
day he brought up the subject and said it would be an interesting thing to report on. I again offered to
help be an off the record source on the story, and he said that was fine.
I told him that I'd take the initiative to join IRC (he didn't know what that was) and talk with
members of the group, and see what kind of story might be there. He said that was fine, that he was
going to focus on some other things, and that I should let him know when I thought I'd found
something worth reporting. He told me to be careful and, for the moment, to leave his name out of it, so
I did. But I also asked if I use one of his computers to research the group, and he said that was fine.
The first few days I watched the IRC room were kind of a waste. I used a handful of aliases (and
always used VPN) and tried to communicate with different members of the group but it didn't really go
anywhere. I was pretty much dismissed, or repeatedly encouraged to download their DdoS tool to
participate in the “operations” against Paypal and Visa.
Eventually, I thought if I was going to make any headway, I had to really get the group's attention.
I joined their general room and asked if anyone wanted the credentials to the content management
system of Fox News. A few people told me that targeting media organizations was not allowed, but one
person eventually did approach me with some interest. His name was Sabu, and I gave him one of the
CMS usernames and passwords. He eventually invited me into a room called Internet Feds where there
were a few dozen people discussing various hacking campaigns. I went into the CMS, created an alias
for the Internet Feds, gave them the alias and told them they should go nuts.
Internet Feds was a secret room and wasn't password protected, but you did have to have an alias
on the approved list in order to join. My alias at the time was AESCracked and it was one that both I

 and Matthew would use for about a month on.
Later that day, I told Matthew about Sabu and the Internet Feds. I didn't tell him I had given them
any credentials or anything like that, because I figured if I had Matthew would be upset and not want to
continue with the story. I figured the less he knew about about any of that stuff the better. What I did
tell him is that he should log on to IRC (I showed him how to use it) and that he should look for
someone named Sabu, that Sabu would invite him into a room of high-level hackers and that he should
just watch what went on in the room.
I told him he should use the VPN software on his computer when he logged on to IRC because it
would help give him a layer of security. He asked me why, noting that he had only really used the
software to watch overseas TV, and I told him that when a person logs on to IRC, their IP address is
usually visible for anyone also logged on to IRC to see. Most people on the network knew better than
to have their IP address visible, and one way to keep it hidden was to use the VPN. He still didn't
understand. I told him that if someone had his IP address, they could figure out who he was and they
could hack his computer. That convinced him and he said he would use the VPN software.
I also gave him a thumb drive with a handful of screen shots that I had saved of my interaction in
Internet Feds. I used two thumb drives during the whole episode – one that I saved all of my screen
shots on, as well as some of the content management system stuff like the customer e-mail list, and a
second thumb drive that I would give to Matthew with just a handful of the screen shots that I thought
he would find interesting for his story. On the thumb drive I gave Matthew, I didn't include any of the
screen shots that showed the handing over of the password or anything I had harvested from the content
management system. So basically, the only thing on the thumb drive he had pertained to the very basics
of my interaction with Anonymous and the Internet Feds – mostly who these guys were and what they
were doing.
The next day, Matthew told me he had approached Sabu, that he told Sabu he was a journalist and
that he had been invited in to Internet Feds. He said he had heard people discussing a possible attack on
Fox News and the Los Angeles Times. He also said he saw mentions of a Mastercard list and that
people had been discussing user credentials of Amazon employees. I said that sounded interesting, and
he said he was really rattled by what he had seen in the chat room and that he hadn't slept the night
beforehand. I offered to stay the night with him that night, and he said that was fine.
One thing he said he found was interesting was a list of username and passwords that appeared to
belong to government employees. He reached out to someone at the PBS NewsHour, and they were
considering doing a story on it. But what he was most concerned about was the mention of the Los
Angeles Times attack. He kept bringing it up, saying he was worried that they might try to do
something.
A few hours later, he said he felt like he had to reach out to the Fox station to let them know about
what was going on with Anonymous and the Internet Feds. He said he would pitch it to them as a news
story, but that it would also serve a dual purpose in that letting them know that the Los Angeles Times
had been discussed as a target might raise some flags at the company and they might be able to prevent
an attack before it began. He said the Los Angeles Times was a sister company of the Fox station where
he worked, and that it was the most-concerning thing he had heard about in the room. I told him it was
probably nothing and that he shouldn't worry about it, but the more he talked about it the more
concerned he seemed. He said while he thought it would make for a good news story, he was really
concerned about a Los Angeles Times attack. He said he would e-mail his old co-workers to pitch it to

 them as a story, but also to warn the company, killing two birds with one stone. When I asked him why
he didn't just go to someone at the newspaper, he said he didn't know anyone there and that his old coworkers would probably be the best people to reach out to because they could contact the right people
at the company to prevent an attack.
Later that night, Matthew said he had gotten off the phone with his old boss and that he had
pitched the story to the station, but it seemed like they were going to pass on it. He seemed really
annoyed, and I asked him what was wrong. He said his boss kept asking about e-mails that the station
had been receiving from someone named Fox Mulder, and that his old boss kept accusing him of
sending the e-mails. He said he got annoyed with his boss several times on the phone, and that by the
end of the call he realized that reaching out to the company was probably a mistake. He said the call
reminded him why he'd quit the station in the first place, and that he probably wasn't going to contact
them again. He went into a long rant about the station, how much stress the place had caused him, how
they were losing people left and right and why he felt his boss probably deserved to be fired. I figured
that was probably not the best time to tell him I had been behind the e-mails and that it was all nothing
more than a huge prank. He was worked up and I didn't want him to be mad at me.
A couple of days later, one of the Internet Feds users named Sharpie bragged about how he had
changed an article on the Los Angeles Times website, but that the article had been restored pretty
quickly. He sent me an image of what the article looked like, and I saved it to the thumb drive. I looked
at the list of credentials and tried to use one to log into the CMS, but it was locked out. Sharpie seemed
pissed, but we quickly forgot about it and moved on.
For weeks, I interacted with the Internet Feds, always making sure to VPN in when I connected to
the room, usually using AESCracked but a few times I logged on to the general Anonymous network
and the public channels under different nicknames. Matthew said he mostly used the AESCracked
nickname that I had set up, but he very rarely talked with anyone in the room, instead wanting to
observe what they were doing. He said the things he saw in the room were really troubling, and that he
could see why it would make for an interesitng story, because people needed to know what was going
on.
I eventually told Matthew about the Los Angeles Times article, how it had been edited, that it was
Sharpie who did it and that it seemed to be pretty benign. He asked me how Sharpie had gotten access
to the website, and I said it looked like he had gotten in through the content management system
somehow. He said he was a bit relieved to hear that was all they had access to because anything
changed on the CMS could be easily restored in a few minutes and that you could cut people off pretty
quickly.
In January, during one of my interactions with the Internet Feds, it was announced that the entire
room was closing up and starting over, that everyone was being kicked out and that you'd have to earn
your way back into the room. There had been a number of leaks coming out of the room, and they were
concerned about the security of the room. Matthew had been passing along some information he had
seen in the room to a number of journalists, some of whom had started reporting on his findings, but
they weren't sure exactly who was leaking the material so everyone was kicked out. I complained to a
few people, including a hacker named Kayla, that I felt I was unfairly being singled out. Really, I knew
though that it meant Matthew and I were going to lose access to these hackers for the forseeable future.
AESCracked was kicked out and banned permanently that day.
Shortly after it happened, Matthew told me he had been reaching out to a handful of journalists at

 different news organizations, including I think The Guardian and The Wall Street Journal. He asked me
if I had any more screen grabs from IRC that I could share so that he could pass them along. I told him
I would look through my thumb drive and pass along anything I found interesting. Earlier in the month
I'd bought the computer I saved up for and didn't need Matthew's anymore, so all of the files were on
my computer.
I went home, copied some files over to the thumb drive, and went back to Matthew's apartment and
gave them to him. He took the thumb drive, copied the files to an external drive he had, and said he'd
look through them later. I went home.
A few hours later, he messaged me and asked me to come over to the apartment, that he wanted to
talk about something. I didn't think much of it, but when I arrived at the apartment, Matthew looked
slightly worried and slightly angry. He said some of the files I had given him made it seem like
AESCracked had given access to the Los Angeles Times's sytem to the Internet Feds, and that there
were discussions of selling an e-mail list (I had, at one point, jokingly offered to sell a short e-mail list
to people in different Anonymous chat rooms).
I mostly came clean to him, telling him I'd known about the Los Angeles Times targeting ahead of
time because I had given them a username and password I found on his computer that I assumed hadn't
worked anymore because he hadn't been employed by the station in weeks. I said it was pretty shitty
that their security didn't turn off the username and password after he left, and he said it wasn't the point,
that he felt like I had betrayed him and that I had no business doing what I did.
He asked me about the e-mail list and if it had anything to do with the e-mails his old boss had
asked about. I told him that the list wasn't the same, that I was joking about selling an e-mail list, but
that I had sent the e-mails to his old co-workers and his old boss, and that I might have sent e-mails to
some of the station's viewers too. He asked me how that was possible, and I lied and said I got their email addresses from viewing the people who liked the TV station's Facebook page.
He was upset to the point he started yelling. He said he felt I had betrayed him, and that none of
my pranks were funny. He said I had put his reputation with his old co-workers at the station in
jeopardy and that I possibly damaged his career as a result. Things got so heated that his neighbor came
over to ask if everything was okay. I took that as a sign that I should probably leave, and I took the
thumb drive on my way out. I chucked it in a trash can on the way to the bus stop.
I felt awful. For days, Matthew wouldn't return my calls or texts. Finally about a week later he
asked me to come over. When I did, he said he had still been working on the story, still reaching out to
reporters and still passing along information to them. He said he had stopped using anything I'd given
him because he felt it had been tainted, but he also said he appreciated my work in getting the story
going, and that he probably wouldn't have anything to tell or any kind of story had it not been for the
extra push.
I asked him what that meant as far as our friendship went and as far as they story goes. For the
story, he said it would be unethical for him to name me as a source in any regard and that as a journalist
he still had to keep his sources confidential. He said if problems came up as a result of the information
that he would be honest but that otherwise he would take care of it, and he couldn't see anything
coming up in the future that would cause an issue. As far as our friendship went, he said it was pretty
fractured and that there was an issue of trust, but that it was something we could probably work on.

 A few months later, he moved away. He got a job in San Francisco, and then a few months later in
New York, and before he moved to New York we kept in touch and met up regularly, but not as often as
we did when he lived in Sacramento. During his time in New York, we grew more distant and we
eventually fell out of touch.
When I found out that he had been indicted, I was rattled. I read the Reuters story he had written
and some of the reports he helped contribute to, and I couldn't see how anyone would find anything
wrong with merely observing a chat room. Later I found out that someone had written in a book about
Anonymous that Sabu had claimed he passed the username and password in the group – something he
wouldn't have even known about – and that he had denied the claim. I was pretty pissed that the FBI
would think that was a legitimate reason to indict Matthew until I read a BuzzFeed story that claimed
he had confessed.
I read as many of the court documents as I could find on the matter. I read through the
interrogation with the FBI and was floored. I saw that Matthew tried to have the confession thrown out
by saying he was on sleeping pills, and having spent the night with him a few times while he was on his
sleeping medication (which I guess he's still taking), I can tell you that there were a few times when
Matthew would wake up in the morning, say or do something, and then go back to sleep. When I'd
reference what he said or did, he remarked a few times that he thought he was dreaming and was a bit
surprised to learn that it had actually happened. My guess is maybe that's what happened when the FBI
interrogated him – he thought he was dreaming, so he covered for me the best he could. One section of
the interview where it looks like he's about to deny any involvement only to have the FBI interrupt him
stands out to me as proof that perhaps he thought he was dreaming and couldn't tell the difference
between fantasy and reality. I really don't know.
What I do know is that Matthew is not the criminal mastermind or dangerous hacker that the
government has portrayed him to be. The only things Matthew is guilty of are being an passionate
journalist who is deeply committed to his work, someone who is incredibly caring and very loyal to his
friends, someone who values ethics and responsibility, someone who cared enough about his former coworkers to not want to see them get hurt, and someone who cared enough about me and enough about
ethics to keep his commitment to keep me anonymous as far as a news source goes.
I haven't said anything up until this point because I had some faith that the system would come to
see these things in Matthew and that the charges against him would be resolved in his favor. I also felt
the evidence against him would be incredibly weak, that no judge would allow the case to go forward
and that no jury would convict him. I figured if they saw and heard from Matthew, they would see what
everyone sees in him.
But it looks like that did not happen. Instead, he faces 25 years in prison because someone gave a
hacker a username and password to a website where text on a web article could be changed for an hour.
I noticed the person who actually did the hacking has never been charged, which makes me feel like the
entire case against Matthew is nothing more than politics, a way for a few people to make a name for
themselves by taking down a dedicated journalist.
Even though I know Matthew committed no crime (I can prove it – in a separate e-mail to you, I've
included the list of email addresses I harvested from the content management system along with a few
screen grabs that I've held on to that Matthew never saw, both should be enough to prove his
innocence), I feel that I cannot come forward and reveal who I truly am. If I thought that I might be
subjected to maybe a misdemeanor point on my record, some community service and maybe even a

 fine, I might come forward. But the thought of spending 25 years in prison over someone changing a
few words on a web article is frightening. I can only imagine what Matthew is going through, how
devastated he and his family might be, and how frightened he must feel at the thought of going to
prison for something he didn't do. I also know Matthew well enough to know that he will go to jail if it
means protecting a source, because that's what good journalists do.
I hope it does not come to that. I hope this letter, and the proof I've provided, will help those
lawmen see the error of their ways, will convince the justice system to right their wrongs, and that it
helps clear his name.
Thank you for your time.
- Sam Snow