A Florida man was sentenced Monday to 10 years in prison for hacking into the personal online accounts of Scarlett Johansson, Mila Kunis, and a number of other female Hollywood celebrities over the past two years.
United States District Judge S. James Otero sentenced Christopher Chaney, 35, after hearing the prosecution argue that the Jacksonville, Fla., native had accessed the email accounts of more than 50 people in the entertainment industry between November 2010 and October 2011, including the aforementioned, rapper Kreayshawn, and singer Christina Aguilera, who spoke out against the defendant.
“That feeling of security can never be given back and there is no compensation that can restore the feeling one has from such a large invasion of privacy,” Aguilera said in a statement.
According to the prosecution, photos of Aguilera appeared online after Chaney hacked into her stylist’s email and sent her an email requesting that she forward scantily clad photographs.
Foremost in the argument against Chaney was the revelation that he hacked into nude photos that actress Scarlett Johansson had originally intended for her then-husband Ryan Reynolds and uploaded them to the Internet, where they were promoted throughout sites like Reddit, Tumblr, and Twitter.
Chaney also targeted two women he knew, sending nude photographs one of them intended to be private to her father.
One of the two women told the court that she’d suffered from anxiety and panic attacks since learning of the hack, while the other said that she’d since suffered from depression and paranoia.
Chaney was arrested in October 2011 after a yearlong investigation into celebrity hacking that authorities colloquially called “Operation Hackerazzi.” Arresting authorities found that the man’s hard drive contained a number of private celebrity photos as well as a document that kept track of their personal data, according to a search warrant.
Photo via Scarlett Johannson/Facebook
