In 2014, 26-year-old George Garofano was part of team that hacked into a slew of celebrities’ phones to steal their nude pictures. In a scandal as putrid as its name — The Fappening — Jennifer Lawrence, Kirsten Dunst and Kate Upton were among the many stars whose nudes were pinged around the internet. Now George is going to jail.
He’s been sentenced to eight months in prison, followed by three years of supervised release, according to a news release from the District of Connecticut’s Department of Justice. It details the extensive, malicious methods he used to obtain the pics, which largely involved sending emails that looked like they were from Apple, encouraging people to hand over their passwords via a third-party website. With the passwords he could then retrieve their images, as well as exchange information with other gross human beings.
Two other men also known to have participated in the scandal have been sentenced previously — Ryan Collins received 18 months and Edward Majerczyk 9 months, according to the Huffington Post UK. Together, they accessed over 240 iCloud accounts, a large number of them belonging to people in the entertainment industry.
Jennifer Lawrence has since opened up about the incident, telling The Hollywood Reporter in 2017, “I think that I’m still actually processing it. When I first found out it was happening, my security reached out to me. It was happening minute-to-minute — it was almost like a ransom situation where they were releasing new ones every hour or so. And, I don’t know, I feel like I got gang-banged by the fucking planet.”
Needless to say it was a gross violation of privacy, so it’s important to see these men getting their comeuppance. Justice is sweet, karma’s a bitch, be really careful about who you give your password out to please.
