A former New Jersey cop has been jailed for hacking 5,000 college student email accounts and posting nude photos of his victims in what prosecutors called an “extremely nightmarish invasion of privacy.”
Ayron Taylor, from Moorestown, was recently sentenced to 12 years in prison after he had “engaged in illegal computer activity” as a police officer for the Mount Laurel Township, less than a 30-minute drive from Philadelphia, according to the Burlington County Prosecutor’s Office.
Taylor, 25, had hacked into the social media accounts of several women and shared their nude photos, investigators had found.
His first victim raised alarm bells after she contacted Evesham Township police about two years ago, reporting “her Snapchat and Facebook accounts had been hacked by an unknown person who then sent nude photos she had taken of herself to her Snapchat contacts, messaged them to her Facebook friends, and posted them on her Facebook wall,” the prosecutor’s office said in a press release.
Investigators found all the victims had a student email account with Rowan College at Burlington County, about a 10-minute drive from Mount Laurel. The prosecutor’s office said Taylor hacked 5,000 of these college email accounts in the scheme.
The prosecutor’s office said the college cooperated with investigators.
Taylor pleaded guilty in March to Elements of Computer Theft and Official Misconduct.
“You cannot hide from us in cyberspace – we are there, too, and we know how to find you,” Prosecutor LaChia L. Bradshaw said in a statement.
“This was an extremely nightmarish invasion of privacy for these victims,” Bradshaw continued. “It was made even more egregious by the fact that the person who was terrorizing these young ladies was a law enforcement officer.”
Taylor, who had been on the force since October 2021, was suspended after he was initially charged. He later resigned “after measures were taken to terminate his employment,” according to the prosecutor’s office.
