An Illinois man accused of breaking into the Apple iCloud
and Gmail ACCOUNTS of people in the Los Angeles entertainment industry to
obtain their private photos and videos has agreed to plead guilty to a felony violation
of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
Twenty eight years old Edward Majerczyk, a resident of
Chicago and Orland Park is the second man to plead guilty to the photo-hacking
scandal which took place in September 2014 which saw hundreds of illegally
obtained private photographs leaked online.
A plea was entered in the U.S. District Court for the
Central District of California that between November 23, 2013 through August
2014, Majerczyk had engaged in a phishing scheme to obtain usernames and
passwords from around 300 people, including 30 celebrities.
Majerczyk gained access to the victims’ usernames and
passwords after he sent them emails that appeared to be from security accounts
of internet service providers. These mails directed the victims to a website
that would collect their usernames and passwords. After illegally accessing the
email accounts, he obtained personal information including sensitive and private
photographs and videos, reported the US Attorney’s office.
In March, 36-year-old Ryan Collins of Lancaster, Pennsylvania
negotiated a guilty plea deal with authorities in exchange for the police
recommending that he serves 18 months, as opposed to five years, in prison.
Collins sent out emails to his victims that appeared to be
from Apple or Google from November 2012 until the beginning of September 2014. By
illegally accessing the email accounts, Collins accessed at least 50 iCloud
accounts and 72 Gmail accounts, most of which belonged to female celebrities.
Authorities are presently not able to tie two men together in
the federal offence neither can they link them directly to circulating the
photos.
The investigations are in connection with the leaks of
intimate photographs of numerous female celebrities in September 2014 known as
“Celebgate.”
The high profile Hollywood actresses who were the victims of
this hack included Oscar winner Jennifer
Lawrence, Kate Upton, Kirsten Dunst,
Cara Delevingne, Mary-Kate Olsen, Amber Heard, Kim Kardashian, Rihanna among
others. In October 2014, Lawrence spoke to Vanity Fair about the incident,
saying: "It is not a scandal. It is a sex crime. It is a sexual violation.
It's disgusting."
While no victims were named in court documents, the
investigation began after Lawrence and other celebrities complained in
interviews about having their private photos end up publicly disseminated
online.
It is not the first time celebrity nude photos obtained
through by computer intrusions led to a criminal prosecution.
A Florida man was sentenced in 2012 to 10 years in prison
for hacking into email accounts of Scarlett Johansson, Mila Kunis and Christina
Aguilera to leak private information and explicit photos.
A Bahamian man in New York pleaded guilty in May to charges
of hacking into celebrities' email accounts to steal unreleased movies and
television scripts. And a Filipino man was charged last month in New Jersey
with running a scheme to hack into the bank and credit card accounts of
celebrities.