The owner of a now-defunct website that trafficked in stolen nude photos of women, sometimes submitted by jilted ex-boyfriends, pleaded guilty in Los Angeles today to federal charges.
Hunter Moore, of Woodland near Sacramento, entered a plea to one count each of unauthorized access to a protected computer to obtain information and aggravated identity theft.
Moore faces between two and seven years in prison when he is sentenced June 24 by U.S. District Judge Dolly M. Gee.
Charlotte Laws, a Woodland Hills woman whose daughter’s nude pictures were posted by Moore on his now-inoperative IsAnyoneUp.com site, said outside court that her daughter, now 24, would speak at the sentencing hearing.
“We’re all still recovering,” Laws said, adding that her daughter “is better because the photo has been taken down, and there are now new laws against this sort of thing.”
Moore allegedly paid co-defendant Charles “Gary Jones” Evens upwards of $200 a week to break into women’s email accounts and steal nude photos of them, which were posted on the website.
Evens, 26, of Studio City, is set to go on trial before Gee in Los Angeles federal court on March 17.
Moore, now 28, posted nude or sexually explicit photos of women that were submitted without the victims’ permission for “revenge” purposes, prosecutors said. The women’s names, professions, social-media profiles and cities of residence were often included, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Moore paid Evens to hack into victims’ email accounts to obtain additional photos for the site, which operated for about two years before shutting down in April 2012, prosecutors allege.
The website drew media attention and Moore was profiled in Rolling Stone — which dubbed him “the most hated man on the Internet” — and he appeared on TV talk shows hosted by Anderson Cooper and Dr. Drew Pinsky of “Loveline” fame.
Brandi Passante, a star of the A&E reality show “Storage Wars,” sued Moore for defamation in Santa Ana federal court in 2012.
