Revenge Porn King Hunter Moore Indicted by FBI

23 Jan, 2014

Hunter Moore, who has been called “the most hated man on the Internet” for his alleged operation and defense of a revenge porn website, was indicted Thursday by a federal grand jury, according to an official at the United States Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles.

Moore, 27, has claimed to be the operator of isanyoneup.com, a site that posted nude photos of people, many of whom say they did not consent to having their images appear on the Internet. The indictment from the United States District Court for the Central District of California charges Moore and a man named Charles “Gary” Evens, 25, with conspiracy to “access a protected computer without authorization to obtain information for private financial gain” and other counts.

On multiple occasions, Moore paid Evens to break into the email accounts of victims and steal nude photos to post on the website isanyoneup.com, according to the indictment.

The pair are scheduled to appear in court Tuesday afternoon–Moore in federal court in Sacramento and Evens in U.S. district court in Los Angeles.

“We’re ecstatic,” said revenge porn activist Charlotte Laws, who has been fighting for Moore’s arrest for years and who says her daughter Kayla is one of the victims listed in the indictment. “We’re super pleased that the FBI have brought this to fruition. I’ve talked to several of the victims and they are extremely pleased and I know all the victims are going to feel happy and they are going to feel that finally justice is being served.”

“Revenge porn” is a genre of pornography where explicit images are uploaded to the web, most typically by scorned ex-lovers, without the consent of the photo’s subject. Moore’s isanyoneup.com was one of the most prominent hubs for such material until its shuttering in April 2012, when Moore sold it to the anti-bullying site Bullyville and swore he had a change of heart.

Later that year, however, Moore launched a new site, HunterMoore.TV, which he said would map revenge porn victims’ photos with their locations. (He later denied making that statement.) The site does not appear to have ever gotten off the ground as a revenge porn hub, and currently serves as a repository for party fliers.

Victims and activists have long attempted to fight against revenge porn, but so far few states have workable anti-revenge porn laws on the books. Moore long defended his actions by claiming he was protected by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which states that website owners cannot be held liable for content submitted by users. If he actively solicited illegal content, however, as the indictment alleges, he would no longer be granted Section 230 immunity.

This isn’t Moore’s first brush with the law. In March of 2013, a judge ordered he pay $250,000 to Bullyville.com founder James McGibney for defamation damages.

Moore’s former attorney, Reza Sina, told TIME that he represented Moore for about a year, but Moore ceased being a client last year. “In May of 2013 I was in Washington DC and he called me and told me he was being questioned by the FBI and it’s at that time I decided to cease all communications with him,” Sina said.

Time

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