How much does Scarlett Johansson's privacy cost? $66,179.46, according to federal prosecutors asking the man who hacked into the actress's email account to pay up -- on top of 71 months in prison and an additional $150,000 in compensations to others.
Christopher Chaney, 35, pled guilty to nine counts, including unauthorized access to a computer and wiretapping. In addition to Johansson, he also hacked the email accounts of more than 50 people in the entertainment industry, including Christina Aguilera and Mila Kunis, between November 2010 and October 2011. Chaney caused an Internet frenzy when nude images of the starlets leaked online; authorities dubbed the hacking scandal "Operation Hackerazzi."
"Just because you're in the spotlight or just because you're an actor or making films or whatever doesn't mean that you're not entitled to your own personal privacy," Johansson told CNN last fall, in response to having her nude self-portraits leaked to the web.
"I think no matter what the context, if that is besieged in some way, it feels unjust. It feels wrong."
In an interview with a Florida news show last October, Chaney said the hacking "started as curiosity" and "turned to just being addictive," adding: "I deeply apologize. I know what I did was probably the worst invasion of privacy someone could experience. I'm not trying to escape what I did. It was wrong. And I have to just face that and go forward."
But the assistant U.S. attorneys in the case, Lisa Feldman and Wesley Hsu, told a different story, painting a picture of a more brazenly unrepentant Chaney. They said that Chaney continued to hack into the accounts of celebrities even after he was caught by authorities.
"It was apparently such a rush that he continued to do it after the FBI had come and searched his home and seized his computer,” Feldman wrote in court papers filed this week.
Celebrities with nude hacking scandals:
