LOS ANGELES – A Northern California man who operated the Internet’s best-known “revenge porn” website plead guilty Wednesday to federal computer hacking and identity theft charges for hiring another man to hack into e-mail accounts to steal nude photos that were later posted on his website.
Hunter Moore, 28, of Woodland, California, who operated the now-defunct isanyoneup.com, pleaded guilty today to one count of unauthorized access to a protected computer to obtain information for purposes of private financial gain and one count of aggravated identity theft.
As a result of his guilty pleas, Moore faces up from two to seven years in federal prison.
Sentencing is scheduled for June.
The alleged hacker – Charles Evens, 26, of Studio City, California – still faces a host of federal charges and is scheduled to go on trial on March 17.
The indictment alleges that Evens hacked into email accounts belonging to hundreds of victims.
Evens faces charges contained in a 15-count grand jury indictment that accuses him of conspiracy, seven counts of unauthorized access to a protected computer to obtain information and seven counts of aggravated identity theft.
Moore operated the website http://isanyoneup.com, where he posted, among other things, nude or sexually explicit photos of victims.
The pictures were submitted by individuals, without the victim’s permission, for purposes of revenge, Moore admitted in court.
However, to obtain more photos for the website, Moore instructed Evens to gain unauthorized access to – in other words, to hack into – Google e-mail accounts, according to Moore’s plea agreement.
Moore sent payments to Evens in exchange for nude photos unlawfully obtained from the victims’ accounts. Moore then posted the illegally obtained photos on his website, without the victims’ consent, he admitted in the plea agreement.
The plea agreement discusses one specific incident in late 2011 when Moore sent an email to Evens that stated Moore would like as many nude pictures from hacked emails accounts as possible.
In response, Evens accessed a victim’s e-mail account without authorization and obtained pictures, Evens provided the pictures to Moore, and Moore paid $145.70 to defendant Evens using Paypal.
One of the nude photos was posted on isnayoneup.com on December 29, 2011, according to the plea agreement.
Evens is presumed innocent until proven guilty.
The investigation in this case was conducted by the FBI.