Feds; ‘Celebrity Email Hacker Should Pay Restitution’

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According to United States prosecutors working on the case of a hacker who leaked nude photos of Scarlett Johansson, the hacker should have to pay $150,000 in restitution to Johansson and his other victims. The hacker, Christopher Chaney, should have to pay $66,179.46 to Johansson according to documents filed with the U.S. District Court in California. The documents also suggest that he be sentenced to five years in prison for illegal hacking.

Chaney pled guilty to nine hacking charges back in March after he stole nude photos and revealed the pictures of celebrities that include Christina Aguilera and Mila Kunis. He sent the photos to celebrity gossip websites. Chaney is from Jacksonville, Florida and was arrested in October of 2011 as the result of a year-long investigation into the hacking of celebrities. The operation was called ‘Operation Hackerazzi.’ Chaney is scheduled to be sentenced on July 23.

  

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Chaney was hunted by federal agents, who used a battering ram to knock the door down at his brick home that he once shared with his late grandmother. The hacking performed by Chaney was so in-depth that the unemployed man was able to witness discussions between celebrities and their family members and doctors.

All told, Chaney was able to illegally access the private info of 50 stars including Johansson, Kunis and Aguilera. Authorities claim he did all of his hacking with little to no technical computer training. Chaney said he accessed the celebrity emails by using Google and clicking the ‘I forgot my password’ button. He then reset passwords by researching the pet names, the birthplaces and the schools the celebrities attended.

In an interview with GQ, Chaney said, ‘You feel like you’ve seen something that the rest of the world wanted to see. But you’re the only one that’s seen it. I don’t want to compare it to throwing a touchdown pass… but it was a rush.’ Chaney was also able to hijack the forwarding feature so that a copy of each email a celebrity received was sent to him. Chaney claims to have photos of Aguilera wearing just underwear and an actress in her ‘mid-to-late forties’ naked. Chaney also said he had information about male stars who were hiding that they were gay so they can save their careers.

According to prosecutors, Chaney accessed the accounts from November of 2010 to October of 2011. Johansson took nude photos of herself that wound up being posted on the internet, who told Vanity Fair back in December that the photos were for her now ex-husband, Ryan Reynolds.