Celebgate: Hacker Charged with Stealing Nude Photos of Celebrities

A Pennsylvania man has admitted to hacking into the emails of celebrities, stealing nude photos and videos.

Charges were filed against 36-year-old Ryan Collins Tuesday related to a phishing scheme that gave him illegal access to over 100 Apple and Google e-mail accounts, mainly belonging to famous women. Many of his victims were members of the entertainment industry in Los Angeles. Collins has signed an agreement pleading guilty to a felony violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

The case stems from an investigation into the scandal known as Celebgate in which celebrities such as Jennifer Lawrence were victimized. Several female movie stars had nude photos and videos stolen from their personal accounts and posted publicly.

Collins has not been tied to the hack or public leak of stolen photos behind Celebgate, according to the Department of Justice. He’s just the latest hacker convicted of victimizing celebrities.

“By illegally accessing intimate details of his victims' personal lives, Mr. Collins violated their privacy and left many to contend with lasting emotional distress, embarrassment and feelings of insecurity,” said David Bowdich, the Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles Field Office. “We continue to see both celebrities and victims from all walks of life suffer the consequences of this crime and strongly encourage users of Internet-connected devices to strengthen passwords and to be skeptical when replying to emails asking for personal information.”

According to the plea agreement, Collins sent emails to victims that appeared to be from Apple or Google and asked victims to provider their usernames and passwords from 2012 to 2014. After illegally accessing the e-mail accounts, Collins obtained personal information including nude photographs and videos, he admitted. In some instances, Collins downloaded the entire contents of the victims’ Apple iCloud backups. He accessed at least 50 iCloud accounts and 72 Gmail accounts belonging to female celebrities, according to the FBI.

Collins faces up to five years in federal prison.

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