A Florida man has been arrested for allegedly hacking into the email accounts of more than 50 people, including Scarlett Johansson, Mila Kunis, and Christina Aguilera.
Christopher Chaney, 35, of Jacksonville was arrested Wednesday morning, and charged with 26 counts of computer hacking, aggravated identity theft, and wiretapping.
“This arrest comes as a relief to the victims, many of whom suffered great distress,” said Steven Martinez, assistant director in charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles field office, at a press conference.
“The indictment alleges that Mr. Chaney set the victims accounts to automatically forward all of their emails, to his own email. Using these methods, Chaney not only stole private and personal photographs of the victims, he also took financial information, movie scripts, and conversations the victims believed to be private,” Martinez continued.
Dubbed as “Operation Hackerazzi”, Chaney’s arrest is the culmination of a year-long investigation by the F.B.I. into celebrity hacking.
“Because we allege in this case that Chaney instructed the victims’ email servers to forward messages to him, he was able to intercept and view those very same emails, with the victims being absolutely unaware that their private communications had been compromised,” Martinez stated in the press conference.
If convicted on all counts, Chaney would face a maximum of 121 years in federal prison.