Chaney admits what he did was wrong and says he is ready to face the consequences.
“I deeply apologize,” Christopher Chaney, of Jacksonville, Florida, told local station WTEV.
“It started as curiosity and it turned to just being addictive,” he said. “Seeing the behind-the-scenes of what’s going on with the people you see on the big screen.”
Chaney says his so-called addiction got out of control, and he didn’t know how to stop.
“I was almost relieved when they came in and took the computers inside,” he said.
Chaney told the station that he never sold any photos, and is unsure of how they were obtained, suggesting others may have been involved.
“I never wanted to sell or release any images.”
The FBI’s Los Angeles office said the arrest was made as part of “Operation ‘Hackerazzi,’” which involved computer intrusions targeting individuals associated with the entertainment industry.
Chaney hacked Google, Apple and Yahoo email accounts beginning last November and December, then hijacked the forwarding feature so that a copy of every email received was sent, “virtually instantaneously,” to an email account he controlled, according to an indictment handed up Tuesday by a federal grand jury in Los Angeles.
Chaney allegedly used the hacker names “trainreqsuckswhat,” “anonygrrl” and “jaxjaguars911.”
In most cases, Chaney accessed the administrative settings on the victims’ accounts so that all of their e-mails would automatically be forwarded to a separate e-mail account Chaney controlled.
This form of wiretapping allowed Chaney to continually receive victims’ e-mails even after a password had been reset.
Chaney will have an initial appearance in United States District Court in Jacksonville, Florida. He tells WTEV that he plans to plead guilty to all the charges.
It is anticipated that the government will request that Chaney be removed to Los Angeles, the district in which he was charged, to face prosecution.
If convicted on all counts, Chaney faces a statutory maximum penalty of 121 years in federal prison.
In March, there were reports that hackers managed to get private information belonging to 50 female celebrities, including Scarlett Johansson.
Nude pictures of the 26-year-old “Iron Man 2″ beauty surfaced on the Internet in September.
The federal probe began in 2010 after allegations of people hacking into phones and computers belonging to several Hollywood celebrities.
Others included Vanessa Hudgens, Jessica Alba, Christina Aguilera, Ali Larter and Demi Lovato.
The photos of Johansson show the actress in a towel with an exposed backside, while another shows her topless.
They were posted on several celebrity gossip websites.
