Los Angeles, California - A San Fernando Valley man who hacked into e-mail accounts to steal nude photos that were later posted on a well-known “revenge porn” website was sentenced Monday to 25 months in federal prison on computer crime and identity theft charges.
Charles Evens, 26, of Studio City, was sentenced today by United States District Judge Dolly M. Gee.
In addition to the prison term, which Evens will begin serving on January 29, Judge Gee ordered the defendant to pay a $2,000 fine, to perform 20 hours of community service and to pay $147.50 in restitution to one of the hacking victims.
Evens pleaded guilty in July 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. In sentencing Evens today, Judge Gee imposed a one-month sentence for the computer hacking count and a mandatory two-year term for the identity theft count.
Evens obtained nude pictures that were posted on the revenge porn website, http://isanyoneup.com. The operator of that website—Hunter Moore, 29, of Woodland, California—pleaded guilty in February to the same two offenses that Evens admitted to. Judge Gee is scheduled to sentence Moore on November 30.
On his website, Moore posted nude and sexually explicit photos that had been submitted without the permission of victims. To obtain more photos for the website, Evens gained unauthorized access—in other words, hacked into—Google e-mail accounts. 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. Evens admitted that he hacked into e-mail accounts belonging to hundreds of victims.
The investigation in this case was conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.