As reported by CNN Entertainment News, and other media outlets, a man with an admitted addiction to being privy to the "behind-the-scenes" private lives of celebrities, will be serving 10-year federal prison sentence.
Florida resident C.C., 36., spied on 50 celebrities, and hacked their e-mails, before the FBI's Los Angeles office arrested him in 2011. Scarlett Johansson, Mila Kunis and Christina Aguilera were among the celebrities that C.C. stole personal and private information from.
Items taken included nude photographs, scripts and other personal information.
C.C. was arrested during the FBI's "Operation Hackerazzi" – a sting operation that specifically looked into computer hackers that were singling out celebrities.
During his sentencing on December 17, along with the 120-month sentence, U.S. District Judge S. James Otero also ordered C.C. to pay $66,179 in restitution.
C.C. pleaded guilty to wiretapping and had been remanded to custody since March of this year. He had originally faced 26 charges before making a plea deal. If C.C. had been found guilty of all 26 charges, according the U.S. attorney, he could have been sentenced to up to 121 years in prison.
U.S. District Attorney Andre Birotte Jr. said, "Mr. (C.C.) is responsible for causing dozens of illegally obtained, private photographs to be posted on the Internet, where they were available for all to see. This case is a sobering reminder that cyber crime poses a very real threat to every American, and everyone should take steps to safeguard their identities and personal information on the Internet."
During his October 2011 arrest C.C. told reporters, "What I'm most sorry about is that I had to drag my mom into all of this, and my family and my neighbors, and they just want to live their lives… I know what I did was probably one of the worst invasions of privacy someone could experience. And these people don't have privacy to begin with. And I was in that little sliver of privacy they do have."
C.C. said that it began "as curiosity and it turned into just being, you know, addicted to seeing the behind-the-scenes of what's going on with these people you see on the big screen every day...it just happened and snowballed."
Birotte told the press that allegedly C.C. took "financial information, movie scripts and conversations that the celebrities believed to be private."
The addiction was quelled when authorities took C.C.'s computer and arrested him. C.C., "almost relieved" of putting his illegal career to an end added, "I didn't know how to stop doing it myself. I wasn't attempting to break into e-mails and get stuff to sell or purposely put it on the Internet. It just – I don't know."
The illegally taken photographs, including one of a nude Scarlett Johansson, surfaced on the Internet because C.C. offered them up to celebrity blog sites.
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