A man has pled guilty to hacking accounts to retrieve nude photos of celebrities including Jennifer Lawrence, Kate Upton, Mary E. Winstead, and Kirsten Dunst. The photos were eventually leaked en massed in what was delicately referred to as The Fappening.
The photos, originally posted to 4chan, made their way to Reddit, where they spread like wildfire. The photos were removed from Reddit and all related subreddits almost one week after the leak, but not before reportedly generating an estimated quarter-billion page views and tons of cash for the site.
36-year-old Ryan Collins of Lancaster, Pa. pled guilty Tuesday to "gaining unauthorized access to a protected computer to obtain information," the Associated Press reported. Collins allegedly hacked into the emails and online accounts of female celebrities and was able to access the private photos. Collins reportedly hacked into 100 Google and Apple accounts from November 2012 to September 2014.
Although Collins pled guilty to stealing the photos, authorities haven't found evidence that he posted the photos online or that he shared them, according to the AP.
Lawrence, the celeb most vocal about the leak, addressed the leak in a Vanity Fair interview in October 2014:
She added:
Representatives for Jennifer Lawrence, Kate Upton, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, and Kirsten Dunst, didn't immediately respond to Complex's request for comment.
The APreports that a date hasn't been set for Collins' sentencing.
