Second man pleads guilty to breaking into celebrity accounts
No, the convictions over celebrity account breaches aren’t over yet. Chicago man Edward Majerczyk has agreed to plead guilty to using phishing scams to fool more than 300 people into compromising their Gmail and iCloud accounts, including 30 celebrities. The bargain reduces his sentence from a maximum of 5 years in prison to between 6 to 12 months. We’ll learn the extent of his time behind bars in a few weeks, when the case transfers from California to Illinois for sentencing.
The decision comes just 3 months after Ryan Collins’ own plea. However, it’s notable that there’s no apparent connection between the two men — they just happened to be targeting famous people (including the likes of Jennifer Lawrence) for the sake of downloading racy photos and videos. There’s also no hard evidence that they posted the material online themselves. Either way, it’s increasingly apparent that the US is determined to crack down on high-profile breaches like this.
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