Remember how at the beginning of 2014, nude photos of Jennifer Lawrence were posted online? Justice is finally served.
About five years ago, Jennifer Lawrence, Kirsten Dunst, Meagan Good and a handful of other females were hacked. A man from North Branford, Connecticut was one of four men charged for the, “sex crime,” as stated by Lawrence. The hacking scandal was related to a wide-spread phishing scheme where the convicted man, George Garofano, age 26, illegally obtained over 200 accounts. Some of these Apple and Google accounts belonged to celebrities, many did not.
According to a press release obtained by WBTI, Garafano was sentenced to 8 months in prison and three years of supervised release. Eight months doesn’t seem very long for someone that hacked approximately 240 accounts, however computer hacking without damage to property is only a class B misdemeanor at this time. Since Lawrence was an adult at the time of distribution, the nude photo release didn’t extend his jail time.
So how did he manage to hack these accounts to access personal information?
Garofano pled guilty to posing as security for Apple and encouraged users to send him their username and passwords for reset in the email OR by a third party website where the victim would enter their information and he would later access the information.
This investigation started back in 2014 and was known as, “Celebagte” when it was discovered that nude photos of Lawrence had been released without her consent. She had sent the photos to her boyfriend at the time. “I was in a loving, healthy, great relationship for four years. It was long distance, and either your boyfriend is going to look at porn or he’s going to look at you,” she told Vanity Fair in an interview after the cyberattack.
“I didn’t know how this would affect my career,” said Lawrence. She thought about apologizing to her fans several times for what had happened. But then realized, she did nothing wrong. She was a victim and making a victim feel responsible is part of this culture. “Every single thing that I tried to write made me cry or get angry,” Lawrence stated.
In 2017 she spoke about it again while on a podcast for The Hollywood Reporter’s Award Chatter, “I think that I’m still actually processing.”
Around this time, Lawrence stepped back a bit from the spotlight to try and reclaim her confidence and get her life in order. The Passengers actress had many women encouraging her to file a separate lawsuit for the leak. The FBI was already investigating the hack at this time and distribution of adult pornagraphy is a tough case to pursue.
“None of that was going to bring my nude body back to me and Nick [Hoult], the person they were intended for. It wasn’t going to bring any of that back. I wasn’t interested in suing everybody. I was interested in healing.”
Garofono was released on a $50,000 bond and has been ordered by U.S. District Judge Victor A. Bolden to report to prison on October 10th, 2018 to begin his sentence.
