Third man charged in ‘Celebgate’ iCloud hacking scheme

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Celebgate hack
Phishing scam targeted dozens of celebrities, along with other users.
Image: Cult of Mac

A third man has plead guilty to hacking 550 iCloud and Google Gmail accounts, including those belonging to 40 celebrities — resulting in the leaking of sensitive photos and videos.

Chicago resident Emilio Herrera participated in the phishing scam between April 2013 and August 2014, which involved sending out alerts that appeared to have come from Apple, Yahoo, and Hotmail, requesting username and password information.

Herrera plead guilty to unauthorized access to a protected computer in order to obtain information.

He is the third person prosecuted as part of an investigation which began following the leak of nude images of Jennifer Lawrence and dozens of other celebrities in 2014.

The images were then posted on the internet to make them publicly available. However, it does not appear that he was involved with sharing or uploading the images in question.

Others who have been charged with similar offences include Edward Majerczyk of Chicago, who was sentenced to nine months in federal prison, and Ryan Collins of Pennsylvania who was sentenced to 18 months in federal prison.

Herrera’s case is now being transferred to the Northern District of Illinois, where he is expected to enter a guilty plea. He faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison for his role in the phishing scheme.

Source: LATimes

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