CLEVELAND — Parents, here’s a question for you. What would you do if you found out your child is a criminal hacker?
More and more families are finding themselves in the middle of investigations after young hackers find ways of extorting big-time money, like the recent PowerSchool hack that affected districts in our own backyards.
It all came down to this for Matthew Lane:
“‘FBI! We have a search warrant for Matthew Lane. You need to open this door right now!’” Lane said, recalling what happened.
As a child, Lane said he struggled with mental health. He had problems connecting with people. So, he went online.
“It’s a very toxic and edgy corner of the internet, and like, not a lot of people know that,” said Lane.
By 13 years old, he said he bought a program to help him cheat on the hugely popular game Roblox. Then, he taught himself about apps and internet security, which lured him into the world of online hackers.
“And you see this lavish, luxurious lifestyle that these kids, other people sometimes adults 20 to 40 years old, leading,” said Lane. “And you’re like, as a young kid like, ‘I want that.’”
At 19 years old, he captured a database from the education software company PowerSchool and put millions of children and teachers at risk by exposing their personal information. He helped in the plan to extort nearly $3 million in Bitcoin to not leak that info.
Much of the money he got from his crimes supported his drug addiction.
“And you just fall down this path of like absolute like turmoil and like chaos and like literally psychotic behavior,” Lane said.
The data breach affected local school districts like Elyria, North Olmsted and Shaker Heights. We reached out to get on-camera interviews with them. None were set up.
We do know Lane is part of a growing list of young criminal hackers like Joseph Garrison, who stole $635,000 from clients of a sports betting business.
Garrison talked to investigators about his cybercrimes.
“Doing that was all really easy compared to working at Walgreens,” said Garrison in the interrogation room. “I mean, working at Walgreens is a lot harder than cracking some accounts.”
The FBI said the average age of someone arrested for any crime in the U.S. is 37, but the average age drops to 19 for cybercrimes. Again, Lane was 19.
Investigators suggested that parents understand what their kids are accessing and use app and site monitoring, as well as timers on technology.
“Creating distractions and creating barriers for your teenager to access some of these networks is important, talking to them about cases that are ongoing,” said Doug Domin, who is a supervisory special agent with the FBI.
Lane agreed. “Be there for your kids and talk to them, like talk to them as a human,” said Lane. “See what they’re doing, what they’re interested in, you know. But also warn them about, you know, how things can get crazy on the internet.”
Lane said hacking got so crazy for him that he was actually grateful for the FBI knocking on his door that day.
“I was so thankful I got caught. I really am,” said Lane, with tears in his eyes. “Like that stuff like affected me so bad. And like, I would have ended up literally dead.”
ABC News sat down with Lane just a couple of days before he started serving his 4-year prison sentence. You can hear much more about young hackers on Good Morning America later this morning and during the Nightline special “Minor Mayhem: The Hackers of Gen Z” airing tonight after Jimmy Kimmel.
PowerSchool and Roblox sent News 5 the following statements about security incidents:
PowerSchool
“PowerSchool appreciates the efforts of the prosecutors and law enforcement who brought this individual to justice. Since the moment we became aware of this incident, we have remained focused on supporting our school partners and safeguarding student, family, and educator data.
We’ve dedicated the last year to supporting customers throughout our investigation, including publishing a public incident report in March 2025 by CrowdStrike, an industry leading cybersecurity firm. The incident report found only certain SIS customer environments were affected, and found no evidence of fraud, misuse of information, malware, or unauthorized activity in the PowerSchool environment. Not all PowerSchool SIS customers were affected, and districts and schools that do not utilize PowerSchool's SIS were not affected. Finally, we have no evidence that other products were impacted.
PowerSchool takes the responsibility to protect student data privacy and to act responsibly as data processors to schools and districts extremely seriously. We strictly and proactively follow all legal, regulatory, and voluntary requirements for protecting student privacy including federal laws such as the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) and state regulations.”
Roblox
"Cyber crime is an industry-wide challenge. At Roblox, we established the HackerOne Bug Bounty program to encourage people to ethically report security issues. We've hired several young people directly from the HackerOne program who now work full-time at Roblox securing our systems.
We also have cutting edge anti-cheat systems that are designed to prevent exploits in Roblox experiences.
We work closely with law enforcement and other partners to report cyber-enabled crime through the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3). We’re also a member of the Domestic Security Alliance Council (DSAC), which has been an integral partner for exchanging threat intel when certain security incidents occur.”
