14 DAY TRIAL // Edward J. Majerczyk, also known as the Celebgate hacker, was sentenced to nine months in prison.
Following one of the largest celebrity hacking scandals in the world, the 29-year-old man admitted that he hacked into the Apple iCloud and Gmail accounts of over 300 people, including at least 30 celebrities. Those photographs and other personal content landed online, particularly nude photos and private footage that wasn’t supposed to see the light of day.
On top of the nine months he will spend in prison, Majerczyk was also ordered to pay $5,700 to an unnamed victim who had to spend twice as much on counseling. This is a suggestion made by US Attorney Rajnath Laud, who said there was no evidence that Majerczyk was the one to actually put the photos online.
It was already expected that the hacker was going to spend said nine months behind bars because that was the amount of time they agreed on last year when they struck a plea deal.
No excuses
Celebgate has been a terrible affair for many celebrities, including Jennifer Lawrence, Kate Upton, and Justin Verlander, Kirsten Dunst and Kaley Cuoco, to name a few. US District Judge Charles Kocoras had a few choice words to say about the way the hacker had behaved, describing the horror the victims must have felt when they discovered their private pictures plastered all over the Internet.
Majerczyk’s home was first raided in October 2014 when authorities found the evidence they were looking for. The hacker later explained that he used a phishing scheme by sending his victims emails from addresses that seemed genuine, appearing to be from the Internet Service Providers security account. The links would then direct the victims to a website he set up that collected their usernames and passwords. This is one of the most common online data theft methods.
Two guilty parties
Majerczyk wasn't alone in this scandal. Ryan Collins is the other hacker arrested in the Celebgate case from September 2014, also known as The Fappening. Collins already received his sentence back in October 2016, when a judge decided he had to spend 18 months in prison.
A third person who is believed to have been responsible for actually uploading the photos online has yet to be identified.