Hunter Moore, the so-called “revenge porn king”, has pleaded guilty to charges of hacking and identity theft. He launched the website IsAnyoneUp.com, where jilted lovers could post sexually explicit pictures without the victim’s consent. Moreover, such pictures could be posted alongside full names and contact details – both offline and online – of the victims.

According to prosecutors, the site operator paid a hacker named Charles Evens for obtaining illegal access to the email accounts of at least 7 victims to post more pictures on his site. Although California had new laws against revenge porn, Hunter Moore was caught by FBI in the investigation into the email hacking. The suspect agreed to plead guilty to all charges and is currently facing 24 months in prison along with a $500,000 fine.

However, after news of the FBI investigation emerged in press, Hunter Moore started making threats: for example, he threatened to burn down the headquarters of the Village Voice if it ran the story.

It is known that IsAnyoneUp.com was quite a large property – three years ago, in one of the interviews that was written around the time that the alleged hacking took place, the site operator claimed that the website was visited by 30m unique users each month, earning him $10,000.

A few years ago, an entrepreneur and former marine who owns a network of anti-bullying services bought out the popular revenge porn website with the intention of shutting it down. Three days after the sale, Hunter Moore called the buyer a pedophile and threatened to rape his wife. In response, the entrepreneur sued him for defamation and won – Moore was ordered to pay a $250,000 in damages. The same entrepreneur admitted that pleading guilty appears “one of the smarter moves” Moore had made, as he now receives lots of emails from people very happy that the “revenge porn king” is going to jail.