Scarlett Johansson Leaked Photos 2011: Hacker Faces 121 Years in Prison
Scarlett Johansson’s phone hacker, Christopher Chaney, could face up to 121 years in prison if convicted on all charges.
The one-man hacking mastermind accessed the email accounts of dozens of people, most of which were celebrities. The accused 35-year-old Florida man, who terrorized many Hollywood starlets for over a year, was arrested in Jacksonville early Wednesday morning.
Chaney has been charged with 26 accounts of hacking.
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A Los Angeles grand jury indicted Chaney with nine counts of computer hacking for illegally gaining access and causing damage to email systems operated by Apple and Yahoo, eight counts of aggravated identify theft for using email identities in furtherance of his computer hacking, and nine counts of illegal wiretapping for intercepting the private email communications of his victims.
The sentence for aggravated identify theft alone is two years in federal prison.
According to the FBI, the hacker was able to access online accounts of the victims by sorting through public data on each person and guessing the passwords as well as security questions on each account. Chaney then set up a forwarding application where every email sent or received by the account holder went into a special account controlled by him.
Steven Martinez, assistant director in charge of the FBI office in Los Angeles, said, “It’s simply that you may have selected a password that’s meaningful to you that you may disclose online with friends,” reported CNN.
“Your pet’s name or whatever. That’s a clue to a hacker, to start there,” added Martinez.
The FBI has not released the details about how they discovered Chaney. The agency did specify that Scarlett Johansson’s nude picture has been entered in the investigation, but did not confirm if the slew of other celebrities that have been named as victims are involved in the case.
Chaney reportedly hacked accounts and devices of over 50 people, including entertainers Mila Kunis, Christina Aguilera, Jessica Alba, and Miley Cyrus, among several other celebrities.
