Chalk one up for revenge porn victims.
Charlie Evens, 26, has pleaded guilty to hacking into the email accounts of hundreds of women to steal and resell their naked pictures. He faces up to seven years in prison.
This act — posting non-consensual nude photos of a person on the web — is a growing form of online harassment known as “revenge porn.”
Evens — who was the focus of a recent CNNMoney report — fessed up on Wednesday before United States District Judge Dolly M. Gee in California.
When Evens was 23, he was hired by Hunter Moore, who is known as the “king of revenge porn” to steal naked photos of women. Moore would pay Evens for the pictures and post them on his now defunct site, IsAnybodyUp.com.
In February, Moore pleaded guilty to the same two felony charges — federal computer crime and identity theft.
“I did it for money, it makes me sound like a monster,” Evens told CNNMoney’s Laurie Segall earlier this year.
Evens said he met Moore after hacking him — he didn’t even know who Moore was at that time.
“He contacted me saying that he’d pay me to [hack] for him,” he said.
So Evens began stealing photos to make money — he had just gotten out of rehab and had lost his previous job due to drinking.
Evens said he’d make between $500 and $1,000 a week.
He referred to his “gig” as “really shitty.”
“You have to do all these mental gymnastics to be able to live with yourself,” he told CNNMoney.
After hacking into a victim’s Facebook or e-mail account, he would carry on with his normal life and go party with friends.
“I’ve thought about, when I’m out [of prison], if I can meet some of [his victims] and look at them and it just terrifies me,” said Evens,
Like Moore, Evens will face a maximum of seven years in federal prison, and a mandatory two-year term for identity theft. Evens’ sentence is expected to take place November 16, after Moore’s on August 12.
Recent wins for the battle against revenge porn also include steps by Google and Reddit to remove revenge porn from their search results.