Revenge-Porn Site Owner Hunter Moore Pleads Guilty, Faces Prison Time
Hunter Moore, the former proprietor of revenge-porn website IsAnybodyUp.com who Rolling Stone dubbed “the Most Hated Man on the Internet,” pleaded guilty to aggravated identity theft and aiding and abetting in the unauthorized access of a computer. In addition to his mandatory prison sentence, Moore also agreed to a three-year period of supervised probation, a minimum $500,000 fine and an order that he delete all the data on his seized computers, Ars Technica reports.
Moore’s plea comes 14 months after the FBI arrested and indicted him and his accomplice Charles “Gary” Evens on a 15-count indictment pertaining to the charges. Forbes writes that, under the terms of his plea bargain, Moore will serve two years in prison for the identity theft on top of between five and seven years imprisonment on the hacking charge, which Moore received after he paid Evens to infiltrate victims’ emails unknowingly to find fodder for his controversial website. Moore will officially be sentenced at a later date, most likely in March.
As New York notes, while Moore’s victims may take solace in his imprisonment, the IsAnybodyUp founder wasn’t actually charged with any counts of invasion of privacy or revenge-porn. Many states didn’t sharpen the cyber-laws that protect victims of these types of crimes until after Moore’s site became popular, drawing nearly 30 million views a month at its peak.
With the FBI and the court of public opinion breathing down Moore’s neck, he sold IsAnybodyUp.com in 2012 to a company that rebranded it as anti-bullying site Bullyville.com. In a separate trial, Evens has pleaded not guilty for his role in the hacking despite email evidence showing that Moore paid Evens between $135 to $900 per hack.