orangesparrow (CC BY-ND 2.0)

A San Diego man who created a website where hackers and angry, rejected lovers could post nude photos of people and other personal information without their consent — and charged victims to take the material down — was sentenced to 18 years in state prison.

Kevin Bollaert, 28, was convicted in February on 21 counts of identity theft and six counts of extortion for running two websites that constituted the scheme.

The Associated Press reports via The Guardian:

Jilted lovers and hackers could anonymously post nude photos of people without their consent, along with personal information, at a website Bollaert created called ugotposted.com. More than 10,000 images, mainly of women, were posted between December 2012 and September 2013. People who sought to have the explicit images taken down were directed to changemyreputation.com and charged $250 to $350 to remove the content.

The compromising photos cost people jobs, damaged relationships and led to one attempted suicide. Bollaert earned about $900 a month in website ad revenue and collected about $30,000 from victims.

— Posted by Alexander Reed Kelly.

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