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 Pennsylvania
man to plead guilty to hacking celebrities' email,
iCloud accounts
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[March 17, 2016]
By Piya Sinha-Roy
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A
Pennsylvania man has agreed to plead guilty to a felony
computer hacking charge after authorities said he
illegally accessed private phone and email accounts of
celebrities such as Oscar-winning actress Jennifer
Lawrence to leak information including nude pictures.
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 The U.S. attorney for the Central District of California
charged Ryan Collins, 36, from Lancaster, Pennsylvania,
according to court documents filed on Tuesday.
Collins signed a plea agreement to plead guilty to a felony
violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. He faces up to
five years in federal prison, with a recommended prison term of
18 months and a fine of $250,000.
The case has been transferred from California to the Middle
District of Pennsylvania, where Collins is expected to surrender
and plead guilty. He will be sentenced at a later date.
While no victims were named in the court documents, Lawrence and
other celebrities such as actresses Kirsten Dunst and Gabrielle
Union and model Kate Upton addressed the leak and online
dissemination of their nude photos in interviews.
Representatives for Lawrence, Dunst, Union and Upton did not
return Reuters' requests for comment on Wednesday.
Prosecutors said in court documents that between November 2012
and September 2014, Collins "knowingly, intentionally, and in
furtherance of criminal and tortious acts" accessed at least 50
Apple iCloud accounts and about 72 Google Gmail accounts
belonging to more than 100 people.
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Known as a 'phishing' scam, Collins used fraudulent email disguised
to impersonate legitimate security services, such as
"email.protection318@icloud.com," and requesting usernames and
passwords from the victims, according to prosecutors.
By doing so, Collins accessed the iCloud accounts, used for online
data storage, for 18 celebrities and downloaded the backed-up data
that included nude pictures and videos, court documents said.
It is not the first time a suspected hacker has been charged with
leaking celebrity nude photos.
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 nude photographs
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