U.S. authorities have arrested an infamous "revenge porn" website operator and another California man on charges of stealing nude photos from hundreds of hacked emails and posting them online.
Hunter Moore, 27, and Charles Evens, 24, face several charges including conspiracy, unauthorized access to a protected computer to obtain information and aggravated identity theft. They could go to prison for decades if found guilty.
The arrest that took place as a result of an FBI investigation sheds light on the ugly practice of 'revenge porn' in the U.S. The men reportedly operated a website which posted sexually explicit images after stealing them from target emails for the purposes of revenge, various sources have reported.
The images were reportedly posted without the victim's consent to a website called isanyoneup.com. Many of the images that were posted between 2010 and 2012 were allegedly submitted to the site by former lovers and spouses. The images posted by Moore included the name and other details of the people.
A 2012 article on Moore in Rolling Stone magazine had said that the photos included an "American Idol" finalist, the daughter of a major Republican donor, and also a woman in a wheelchair.
According to the 15-count federal indictment issued this week in Los Angeles, Evens was paid for providing Moore with photos which were obtained by hacking or using other means to access hundreds of email accounts.
Moore offered to pay Evens $200 a week and asked him to use a PayPal account under anonymity to avoid being detected, according to the indictment. Prosecutors allege that Evens was once paid as much as $900.
In a 2012 interview with BBC, Moore said he made as much as $20,000 a month in advertising revenue. Although he conceded that posting the photos could "definitely affect someone's livelihood," he still defended the site.
"I just monetize people's mistakes that they made, and it's kind of a shady business. But if it wasn't me, somebody else was going to do it," he had said.
Moore was often dubbed as the "internet's most hated man" due to his notorious revenge porn site activity.
