Former UDel student stole $1.5 million in COVID funds, cyberstalked 2 women

Warning: This article features graphic content and could be disturbing for some readers.

A former student at the University of Delaware has been charged and sentenced to over seven years in prison after he was accused of cyberstalking women and their families as well as fraudulently applying for pandemic relief funds, U.S. Attorney for the District of Delaware, David C. Weiss, announced.

30-year-old Kyle Stevens was a student at UDel during the 2018-2019 school year when he met two women who would become victims of his stalking online, officials said.

The U.S. Attorney's Office and the Justice Department's Office of International Affairs worked alongside the Germany Ministry of Justice to bring Stevens to America where he faced two indictments on May 23, 2023.

German authorities helped the U.S. get access to Stevens' German-based bank accounts where he had deposited fraudulently acquired pandemic funds of $1,520,164.14. German law enforcement also seized Stevens' cell phone and other electronic devices as part of the investigation.

“The defendant terrorized multiple women and committed over $1.5 million in pandemic relief fraud.  He perpetrated this months-long crime spree, harming individual women and the community at large, all from behind a computer in a foreign country," U.S. Attorney Weiss said in a statement.

It was discovered that Stevens wrote in documents titled "Stalking Notes," "I Did Not Build This Wall" and " "I Hate Pretty Girls" where he expressed his worldviews, officials said. Stevens said that he thought his life was not fair and that he believed he was justified in his actions.

Stevens is also said to have written that he identified with "incels" and "involuntary celibates."

Pandemic funding fraud

Kyle Stevens was studying abroad in Germany in October 2020 when he applied for COVID-19 pandemic relief loans for small businesses ten different times, officials explained.

"What’s stopping me from fraud and taking out many 50k loans?" Stevens wrote in a note to himself at the time.

The small businesses that Stevens applied for did not exist, according to officials. He was able to take over $1.5 million in funding that he would then deposit into his German-based back accounts.

In Stevens' documents, he explained why he thought it was okay for him to steal the funds because he grew up without financial resources.

Stalking female students from UDel

In September of 2021, Kyle Stevens was accused of sending emails and social media direct messages to two female victims that he met while at the University of Delaware, officials said.

Before he began sending these messages, he wrote out a plan on how he would stalk the women, according to officials.

Stevens is accused of sending these women and their family members threatening messages over the course of several months.

In the messages, he told them that he "tried to forgive them" for not giving him attention and that he would get "revenge one way or another."

"These messages kicked off a months-long stalking campaign which included repeated threats to put a 'bullet in your head,' to 'kill you,' or to fire a 'gunshot' no one would be 'able to block,'" officials said.

At one point, Stevens even reached out to the father of one of the victims through Facebook and told him that he couldn't “wait to bash your daughter’s skull in," according to officials. Stevens even planned this message months ahead of time with a calendar event titled "Death threat??"

On Sept. 15, 2021, Stevens fraudulently applied for a pandemic relief loan and also sent, what officials called, his most explicitly violent threat to one of the victims.

"I’m going to slaughter you.  I’m going to string you up.  I’m going to put you on hooks in the back of a freezer like a f[***]ing cow. . . . I could eat your f[***]ing kidneys like Jack the f[***]ing Ripper, dance in your entrails on the UD mall. . . I can jam a barrel down your throat and see how well you can lie to me then.  . . . I’m going to come to you. . . . the police can’t help you.  I’m going to come to you.  I’m going to kill everyone in the way," the message reads.

In the documents that Stevens wrote that were found by authorities, he said that since these women did not give him the attention he thought he deserved, he wanted them to fear him, officials said.