Judge rules Sacramento journalist deleted Comstock’s YouTube page after quitting

Sacramento journalist Matthew Keys violated the terms of his release from federal prison by deleting Comstock’s YouTube channel shortly after he resigned abruptly from the business magazine last year, a federal judge has ruled.

In a court hearing Monday and a written order filed in court Tuesday afternoon, U.S. District Judge Kimberly J. Mueller ruled that Assistant U.S. Attorney Paul Hemesath had proven his case that Keys was the individual responsible for deleting the channel, leading to the magazine losing hundreds of YouTube subscribers and some of its online videos.

“The weight of the evidence shows Keys transmitted the command that deleted Comstock’s YouTube channel,” Mueller wrote in a 12-page order. “Managing that channel was one of his responsibilities at the magazine, where he controlled the user name and password.

“He kept those credentials after he resigned. And soon after he resigned, in the early morning hours between February 9 and 10, the password for the magazine’s Google account was changed, a recovery email address deleted, and the only recovery tools available to secure the account were Keys’s old Comstock’s email address and his phone number.”

Mueller did not indicate whether she will order Keys returned to federal prison, and set a “dispositional hearing” in the case for May 24.

Keys was allowed to remain out of custody, and defense attorney Mark Reichel said during Monday’s hearing that he would file a motion asking Mueller to reconsider her finding.

Keys originally went to prison following a 2013 indictment resulting from a hack into the Los Angeles Times website that led to a news story being altered, court records say.

“The government also suspected Keys had sent threatening emails to employees at a local TV station where he used to work,” Mueller wrote, referring to his time as a producer at Fox40.

A jury convicted him in 2015 on three counts related to computer hacking, and he was sentenced to two years in federal prison and two years of supervised release.

After his release and a stint as a reporter for the Winters Express newspaper, he was hired as digital editor at Comstock’s, managing the magazine’s digital edition, writing stories and handling its social media accounts including the YouTube channel.

“Keys resigned abruptly in late January 2020, a little less than a year after he started and about three months before his term of supervised release was set to expire,” Mueller wrote. “His resignation ‘stunned’ the magazine’s publisher (Winnie Comstock-Carlson), who valued his work ‘immensely’ and had a good working relationship with him.

“She refused his resignation, she asked him to wait, not to quit, and she urged him to spend some time recovering from an illness and to talk with her later when he was better. Despite her pleas, Keys did not stay, and although his personal interactions with the publisher herself did not founder, his departure with the magazine as a business entity was not on good terms.”

Keys refused to turn over his credentials for the magazine’s online accounts, the judge wrote, and accused magazine editors of “aggressive vindictiveness.”

“He accused editors of badgering him after hours, interrupting his sick leave, creating a hostile work environment, ‘making comments about protected classes,’ spreading lies about his work, and lying about the reasons for his departure,” Mueller wrote. “He also pursued complaints at the California Department of Labor and Federal Trade Commission; he claimed that the magazine had violated federal advertising regulations.”

In February, a new assistant editor hired to replace Keys went to the magazine’s YouTube channel looking for videos about chocolate making for a Valentine’s Day feature and discovered the entire channel was gone and Comstock’s website links to the video were broken.

Tom Couzens, executive editor of Comstock’s, filed a report with the Sacramento Police Department, but said in court that went nowhere.

“Before anything came of that report, the magazine’s own investigation led it to suspect that Keys had deleted the YouTube channel,” Mueller wrote, leading Couzens to contact federal prosecutors and the FBI.

An iPhone seized from Keys’ apartment was analyzed by an FBI cybersecurity agent, who determined that in the early morning hours of Feb. 10 the phone had been used to visit the Comstock’s YouTube channel, Mueller wrote.

“Seventeen seconds later, the phone recorded a Google search for ‘how to delete youtube channel,’” Mueller wrote, and a short time later the channel was deleted.

Keys denied deleting the account, telling his probation officer that the accusation may have stemmed from his whistleblower complaint and claiming that Couzens “had lied to police.”

Couzens, a former editor at The Sacramento Bee, declined to comment Wednesday on the judge’s ruling.

Probation filed a petition alleging Keys had violated the terms of his release, and Mueller conducted a daylong evidentiary hearing that included testimony from Comstock’s editors, including Couzens, and an FBI expert.

“No evidence suggests anyone other than Keys had access to his iPhone,” Mueller concluded. “The evidence also shows Keys acted intentionally.

“The deletion occurred only a few weeks after Keys resigned abruptly and acrimoniously.”

This story was originally published April 21, 2021 at 8:07 AM.