Two California men arrested Thursday morning are accused of hacking into hundreds of email accounts to steal nude photos that were later posted on a "revenge porn" website -- the origin and operation of which one of the men explained in a video published more than a year ago on YouTube.
Hunter Moore, -- referred to in a 2012 "Rolling Stone" article as "the most hated man on the Internet" -- and a Southern California man identified as his accomplice are charged with conspiracy, seven counts of unauthorized access to a protected computer to obtain information and seven counts of aggravated identity theft, federal prosecutors said.
Moore, of Woodland, Calif., and 25-year-old Charles Evens, of Studio City, allegedly orchestrated a scheme involving the "revenge porn" website IsAnyOneUp.com, allegedly operated by Moore.
In a video published in July 2012 on YouTube, Moore is seen explaining "revenge porn" and the genesis of IsAnybodyUp.com in an expletive-filled interview. Moore's identity in the video was corroborated by a law enforcement source.
"It all started with me hating some dumb b---- who broke my heart," Moore said in the video as he explained IsAnyOneUp.com was originally intended to be a nightlife website. "It just evolved from there."
He allegedly paid Evens to hack into hundreds of victims' accounts to obtain more content for the site, according to the indictment unsealed Thursday after the arrests by the FBI.
"The moral of the story is that his revenge porn site wasn't a good enough business model, and that he had to engage in illegal activity to populate the site with pictures," Wes Hsu, assistant U.S. attorney for the Central District of California and head of the office’s Cyber and Intellectual Property Crime Section, told NBC News.
The indictment said that Evens contacted Moore in October 2011 about working for him. In December of that year, Evens sent Moore an email asking for $250 for nude photos of "6 guys and 6 girls," according to the indictment, which cites several more emails regarding financial transactions between the two men over the following year.
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If convicted, the men face up to five years in federal prison for each of the conspiracy and computer hacking counts. The charge of aggravated identity theft has a mandatory two-year sentence.
Revenge porn usually involves images uploaded online by ex-partners after bitter breakups or hackers. A California law signed last year by Gov. Jerry Brown makes it a misdemeanor to post identifiable nude pictures of someone else online without permission with the intent to cause emotional distress or humiliation.
