Hacker Faces 105 Years In Prison After Blackmailing 350+ Women

redletterdave writes "According to the 30-count indictment released by the Central District of California, 27-year-old hacker Karen 'Gary' Kazaryan allegedly hacked his way into hundreds of online accounts, using personal information and nude or semi-nude photos of his victims to coerce more than 350 female victims to show him their naked bodies, usually over Skype. By posing as a friend, Kazaryan allegedly tricked these women into stripping for him on camera, capturing more than 3,000 images of these women to blackmail them. Kazaryan was arrested by federal agents on Tuesday; if convicted on all 30 counts, including 15 counts of computer intrusion and 15 counts of aggravated identity theft, Kazaryan could face up to 105 years in federal prison."

Comments

Re:Won't come close to that

[shaitand]

20 years doesn't seem relatively mild. Any actual prison time seems relatively severe. A prison sentence means never being employed in a real job again and likely physical assault and rape. Does offending a few people's sense of modesty really justify doing that to someone regardless of how many people he did it to?

Some sort of small fine seems appropriate here. Maybe $500 that should be enough to discourage most people from this type of behavior.

Re:No sympathy for this one....

[cayenne8]

Although 105 years is excessive and the insane US legal system is clearly broken. I think 5 years is perfectly adequate. And of course paying the rest of his life for restitution to his victims.

For what?!?!

I mean, these women were sending naked pics to people and posting them to the internet. He got them to do it for him specifically...they could have just told him to 'fuck off' and not done the skype thing for him. I mean, they already were posting nude images of themselves, what would they care if they had it posted in a few more places on the internet.

I mean, once you post something on the internet...it is there forever.

Re:The Taliban blames the victim

[cayenne8]

Well, these women had already been posting naked images of themselves on the internet...all this guy was doing was getting them to do it specifically for him.

These women obviously had no problem with their nudity in public, they could have easily told him to fuck off...again, it isn't like they had a problem with public nudity, it was already out there of them.

And once somethings on the internet...it ain't going away.

Re:The Taliban blames the victim

[dgatwood]

I'm usually the sort of person who says that you should never blame the victims. That said, in this case, the victims' actions are so utterly over-the-top foolish that I'm not even sure I can make that argument.

If faced with this situation, anyone with an ounce of clue would properly summarize the situation as "This guy has threatened to expose these seminude pictures of me, and the only way I can stop him is to give him fully naked pictures of me." A person with a modicum of common sense would then realize that when he later exposes those photos, it will cause far more harm than if he exposes the photos he already has, and so would choose to call the police instead, or at least tell the perpetrator to f*** off.

I'm not saying that the guy isn't a dirtbag or that he shouldn't be punished for making the threats, but I would argue that anybody who fell for this scam is the sort of person who, when the gunman says, "Oh. I see I'm out of bullets. Could you hand me that box over there?" hands him the box. As such, they should be charged with aiding and abetting and should be banned from touching a computer until they can prove that they are responsible enough to use one properly.