Jennifer Lawrence's nude photo hacker sentenced to jail time
Five years later, there is finally some closure following a massive nude photo leak affecting Jennifer Lawrence and a number of other female stars.
A North Branford, Connecticut, man who was one of four people charged for the 2014 hacking scandal, related to a phishing scheme in which he obtained illegal access to over 100 Apple and Google email accounts, including some belonging to celebrities, has been sentenced to prison.
According to a press release, George Garofano, 26, was sentenced to eight months in prison, followed by three years of supervised release. Garofano, who has been released on a $50,000 bond, was also ordered by U.S. District Judge Victor A. Bolden in Bridgeport to report to prison on Oct. 10, 2018, as well as serve 60 hours of community service.
U.S. Attorney John H. Durham said in the release that Garofano admitted that he sent e-mails to victims that appeared to be from security accounts of Apple and encouraged the victims to send him their usernames and passwords, or to enter them on a third-party website, where he would later retrieve them.
Garofano's sentence stems from an investigation of the September 2014 “Celebgate” hacks, in which nude photographs of stars like Jennifer Lawrence, Kirsten Dunst, and Meagan Good were distributed online without their consent.
In April, Garofano pleaded guilty one count of unauthorized access to a protected computer to obtain information.
Following the hack, Lawrence called the act a "sex crime," as well as opened up about living in fear and feeling violated.
“When the hacking thing happened it was so unbelievably violating that you can’t even put into words,” she said on The Hollywood Reporter’s Awards Chatter podcast in 2017. “I think that I’m still actually processing.”
Describing the scenario like a “ransom,” Lawrence went on to say, “I feel like I got gang banged by the f**king planet. There’s not one person in the world that’s not capable of seeing these intimate photos of me. You could be at a barbeque and somebody could just pull it up on their phone and that was just a really impossible thing to process.”
The Red Sparrow star also added that many women came to her following the hack, wanting her to join them in lawsuits surrounding the ordeal.
“None of that was going to bring me peace,” she said. “None of that was going to bring my nude body back to me and Nick [Hoult], the person they were intended for. It wasn’t going to bring any of that back. I wasn’t interested in suing everybody. I was interested in healing.”
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