The man who leaked nude pictures of Hollywood celebrities such as Scarlett Johansson, Mila Kunis and Christina Aguilera was sentenced to ten years in prison by a federal judge in Los Angeles on Monday.
U.S. District Judge S. James Otero sentenced Christopher Chaney for hacking email accounts of these top Hollywood stars and then posting personal pictures on the Internet to a decade in jail. The 35-year-old from Jacksonville, Florida pled guilty to wiretapping and unauthorized access to a computer.
While the crime Chaney committed is a severe violation of privacy and certainly worthy of jail-time, analysts are speculating the length of his sentence.
To put things in perspectives, according to the U.S. Justice Department, the average sentence served by a person convicted of rape is between 117 and 65 months, this adds up to between six and less than ten years. According to an OLR Research Report, the average sentence served by a first-time offended convicted of armed robbery with a deadly weapon is ten years. Thus leading to the assessment or rather debate of whether Chaney's sentence was excessive compared to his crime?
However, it is important to note, that Chaney was charged with 126 counts, which including hacking into the stars financial information as well as intellectual property such as movie scripts and on-going projects.
The stars, who fell victim to Chaney's crimes, agree that Chaney got an appropriate sentence for the crimes he committed. The "Avengers" star, Scarlett Johansson told Fox News, "I have been truly humiliated and embarrassed. I find Christopher Chaney's actions to be perverted and reprehensible." The pictures leaked were meant for actor, Ryan Reynolds, her husband at the time.
The "Voice" judge, Christina Aguilera said in a statement: "That feeling of security can never be given back, and there is no compensation that can restore the feeling one has from such a large invasion of privacy," as reported by Fox News.
