- A lawsuit alleges that a former Louisville cop used police databases to find hacking victims and extort them for nude photographs.
- Bryan Wilson targeted a teacher and threatened to send an intimate video to her principal, according to the suit.
A former cop in Louisville, Kentucky, has been sued over allegations that he used his resources and equipment within the police department to harass, cyberstalk, hack, and extort nude images from a schoolteacher.
The lawsuit, filed by an unnamed Jane Doe plaintiff, alleges Bryan Wilson used his position as a police officer to engage in "sexual deviance and predatory acts," over the summer of 2020 and that the police department and Wilson's superiors failed to intervene or take action against him.
Wilson is currently in federal prison, serving a 30-month sentence after pleading guilty last year to stalking multiple women, and to driving past civilians in unmarked police cars and throwing drinks at them.
Wilson's victim was "emotionally devastated and contemplated suicide after Wilson hacked into her online accounts, stole intimate, personal, private video footage of her, and, using information he obtained through his access to LMPD's databases, taunted, harassed, and threatened her for months in an attempt to obtain additional nude photographs," according to the lawsuit.
As a police officer, Wilson had access to a database called Accurint, and used it to obtain information about potential hacking victims, including Doe, the lawsuit said. Wilson would use Accurint to "identify computer applications belonging to those women," then hack into those applications and steal "compromising photographs."
He would then text the women and threaten to publish the photos unless they sent more.
The Louisville Metro Police Department did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment. It's unclear if Wilson has a lawyer currently.
Jane Doe didn't learn that her stalker was a police officer until the FBI investigated him
The lawsuit alleged that Wilson illegally hacked into Doe's private Snapchat account by posing as a member of the Snapchat Support Team and texting her messages about Snapchat's security policy. Eventually Wilson convinced Doe to text her password, and extracted a "private video" from her account.
Wilson then texted Doe the video and suggested that "it would go away if she would show him her 'boobs,'" the lawsuit said. The lawsuit said Doe immediately contacted the Louisville Metro Police Department's sex crimes unit, and called them over 10 times, but she never received a response.
Over the next month, Wilson sent Doe "exploitative, harassing, and cruel" texts from various phone numbers, even threatening to send the intimate video to her friends, family members, principal, school board, and even the school district's superintendent, according to the lawsuit.
Ultimately Wilson sent the video to one of Doe's friends, the lawsuit said.
"Jane Doe was terrified that Wilson was watching her and became deeply afraid for her safety," the lawsuit said, adding that she feared for her job security, and feared her students would find the video.
It wasn't until September 2021 that Wilson's texts stopped, the lawsuit said. That's when the FBI contacted Doe and told her she had been identified as a cyberstalking victim. The lawsuit said she didn't find out the perpetrator was a police officer until June 2022.
Wilson resigned in July 2020 as a result of the criminal investigation against him, according to the Louisville Metro Police Department.
Police Chief Erika Shields said in a statement last year that Wilson's actions — including both the stalking and throwing drinks at civilians — were "reprehensible, sickening," and "demoralizing and dehumanizing to the victims." She said the police department would launch an internal investigation into the incidents.
As part of the criminal probe into Wilson, investigators found dozens of pictures of him exposing his penis while on duty, and often in uniform. He would then post the images online, identifying himself as a police officer, the lawsuit said.
The lawsuit said Wilson's list of victims is "unknown, but is believed to be over 20."