LOS ANGELES – A Northern California man who operated the Internet's best-known “revenge porn” website was sentenced late this afternoon to 30 months in federal prison for hiring another man to hack into e-mail accounts to steal nude photos that were later posted on his website.

Hunter Moore, 29, of Woodland, California, who operated the now-defunct isanyoneup.com, was sentenced by United States District Judge Dolly M. Gee.

In addition to the prison term, which Moore was ordered to begin serving by January 22, Judge Gee ordered the defendant to pay a $2,000 fine.

In sentencing Moore, Judge Gee called the conduct “particularly reprehensible.”

Moore pleaded guilty in February to one count of unauthorized access to a protected computer to obtain information for purposes of private financial gain and one count of aggravated identity theft.

The alleged hacker – Charles Evens, 26, of Studio City, California – was sentenced last month to 25 months in federal prison after he pleaded guilty to the same two felony counts.

Moore operated the website http://isanyoneup.com, where he posted, among other things, nude or sexually explicit photos of victims. The pictures were submitted by individuals, without the victim's permission, for purposes of revenge, Moore admitted in court.

However, to obtain more photos for the website, Moore instructed Evens to gain unauthorized access to – in other words, to hack into – Google e-mail accounts, according to Moore's plea agreement. Moore sent payments to Evens in exchange for nude photos unlawfully obtained from the victims' accounts. Moore then posted the illegally obtained photos on his website, without the victims' consent, he admitted in the plea agreement.

The plea agreement discusses one specific incident in late 2011 when Moore sent an email to Evens that stated Moore would like as many nude pictures from hacked emails accounts as possible. In response, Evens accessed a victim's e-mail account without authorization and obtained pictures, Evens provided the pictures to Moore, and Moore paid $145.70 to defendant Evens using Paypal. One of the nude photos was posted on isnayoneup.com on December 29, 2011, according to the plea agreement.

Evens admitted that he hacked into email accounts belonging to hundreds of victims.

The investigation in this case was conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

CONTACT: Executive Assistant United States Attorney Wesley Hsu  (213) 894-3045

Central District of California DOJ / Release No. 15-142 / December 2, 2015