A man has agreed to plead guilty to hacking into the email and online accounts of several female celebrities, US prosecutors announced today.
Ryan Collins, 36, was accused of gaining access to more than 100 Google and Apple accounts and stealing private information, including nude photos and videos.
Collins, from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, was charged as part of an investigation into the posting of nude photos of numerous stars, including actress Jennifer Lawrence and model Kate Upton, but he is not suspected of being involved in releasing those images.
He will plead guilty to one count of gaining unauthorised access to a protected computer to obtain information, US legal officials said.
Collins, 36, used a phishing scam in which he was able to get victims to provide information about their accounts in response to emails that appeared to come directly from Apple and Google between November 2012 and September 2014.
He was able to obtain all the files his victims had stored online, including nude photos and videos, prosecutors said.
In a plea agreement filed yesterday, no celebrities are identified and there is no evidence Collins himself posted any of the stolen images online.
An investigation into who stole and posted images of Lawrence, 25, and dozens of other female stars is still going on.
Last month another American man agreed to plead guilty to stealing nude or explicit images from 13 people, including some unidentified celebrities. Andrew Helton, of Astoria, Oregon, faces up to five years in prison when he is sentenced in June.
Federal prosecutors in Los Angeles have convicted several men accused of stealing nude images, including pictures of Scarlett Johansson and Mila Kunis. They also prosecuted a man who filmed US television sports reporter Erin Andrews in her hotel room and posted pictures from the clip online.
The man, Michael David Barrett, was sentenced to 27 months in prison in that case.
