Hacking penalties are insanely harsh, but this madness does real damage. Hopefully there's a just verdict (~5-years).

The whole episode is pretty amazing. The publicized evidence clearly shows that the perpetrator of this attack spent some time and trouble. Ever since it happened in 2015, a natural question has been hanging out there: Why?

I can only guess for now that either there was a grudge (as the "failed to remove content" message implied) -- like one of those Town-Square commenters who get banned from the site for excellent reason -- or else, that message was just window dressing for some gambit to gain or extort. People rarely go to that much focused effort without a motive.

I agree with @CommonSense. Why is the real motive for these crimes being covered up? To protect the innocent or to protect the guilty?

I don't maintain that the motive here "is being covered up" -- maybe so for all I know about that! -- but the commenter above argued just from offhand assertion, not evidence, and that's where we differ in approach.

And it's hardly unusual in a criminal case that only parts of the real picture surface in public reports. In another recent Voice story, "An arrest warrant has been issued" for a teen accused of threatening with a replica gun two weeks ago, yet even after an update yesterday, "Police could not clarify whether the suspect had since been arrested." I once served on a felony jury when the prosecution's case left us wondering why it omitted some obviously important details (or any explanation of why they'd been omitted), which would have clarified guilt vs. innocence, which most of us otherwise thought ambiguous; therefore under criminal-trial criteria we had to formally find "innocent," though many weren't sure.

Also if you use passive verbs without agency ("is being covered up"), it conspicuously evades the implicit question of Who "is covering up."