A month after a 29-year-old male hacker pleaded guilty to a U.S. District Court in Chicago of one felony charge of unauthorized access to a protected computer involved in the Fappening, another hacker was sentenced to 18 months in prison for a phishing scheme. The scheme provided him illegal access to more than 100 email accounts.
The U.S. District Court of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania sentenced 36-year-old Ryan Collins for a felony violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. The email accounts that Collins hacked included female celebrities such as Jennifer Lawrence, Kate Upton and Kirsten Dunst whose nude photo leaks came to be known as the Fappening.
From November 2012 until early September 2014, Collins used a phishing scheme to get the user names and passwords of the female celebrities by ending them email messages which appear to come from Apple of Google. When the celebrities replied, Collins gained access to their email account and other personal information, including nude photos and videos, Mynewsla reported.
There were times he used a software program to download all the contents of the Apple iCloud backups of his victims. But investigators failed to find evidence that linked Collins to the actual leaks or he shared or uploaded the information he stole.
He illegally accessed around 50 iCloud accounts and 72 Gmail accounts, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said. However, Collins was sentenced because he intruded into the online accounts of victims and upon their lives which caused these celebrities lasting distress, Deirdre Fike, assistant director in charge of FBI’s LA field office said.
Despite both men pleading guilty to similar charges, the two hackers apparently worked independently of each other, according to Esquire.