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The man behind "celebgate" is going to jail for 18 months. 。
The Justice Department announced on Thursday that 36-year-old Pennsylvania resident Ryan Collins was sentenced after he obtained "illegal access of over 100 Apple and Google e-mail accounts," many of which belonged to celebrities. 。
SEE ALSO:Why hackers choose DDoS attacks 。SEE ALSO:Why hackers choose DDoS attacks 。
He had faced a possible five-year prison sentence and a fine of $250,000. 。
The story made headlines for days toward the end of 2014 after nude images and videos of celebrities were leaked online. 。 “I can't even describe to anybody what it feels like to have my naked body shoot across the world like a news flash against my will," Jennifer Lawrence, one of the most famous actresses whose nude images were stolen and uploaded, told 。Vanity Fair 。
in an article published in November, 2014. "It just makes me feel like a piece of meat that's being passed around for a profit.”
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Thanks for signing up!。The DOJ made no mention of how the images were revealed to the public. 。
Investigators said they didn't find evidence that Ryan Collins had uploaded the nude images he had illegally obtained.Credit: Brian Lawless/PA Wire 。
Collins used phishing emails to get a hold of usernames and passwords for the celebrities he hacked, and did so over an almost two-year period that ended in early September, 2014. 。
He fired off emails that tricked celebrities and others into thinking those emails came from Google and Apple, then had those people fill out passwords. From there, he dug around for images and videos and sometimes downloaded entire iCloud accounts. 。
Investigators determined his hacks involved more than 600 people, and many of them made their livelihoods in the "entertainment industry in Los Angeles." 。
Edward Majerczyk, 28, from Illinois pled guilty to taking part in the celebgate hacking in September, according to a separate DOJ statement. But the agency didn't find evidence that he had uploaded the images online, either. He will be sentenced in January, 2017. 。
Collins' sentence is significantly lighter than the man behind a similar scheme who was sentenced to jail in 2012. 。
Florida resident Christopher Chaney could have been sentenced to up to 121 years in prison for illegally accessing email accounts of around 50 celebrities, doing so by stalking their social media accounts to figure out what their passwords might be. 。