A 24-year-old man has begged a judge to spare him from jail after he threatened to leak Bella Thorne’s nudes.
British computer hacker Joseph O’Connor, 24, has begged a US judge to spare him jail after threatening to spread nude images of Hollywood star Bella Thorne.
Mr O’Connor, who also stole thousands of dollars in cryptocurrency, accessed Miss Thorne’s phone and Snapchat account in June 2019 as he obtained “numerous nude photographs and videos.”
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It’s believed that one of his associates then texted the actress and threatened to release the images unless she advertised O’Connor on her social media.
O’Connor, who divided his time between Liverpool and Spain, was arrested in June 2021 on charges connected to the hacking of more than 130 Twitter accounts in 2020.
(Image: HILLSBOROUGH COUNTY SHERIFF’S OFFICE)
He was extradited to the US in April after spending time in a Malaga prison.
In his letter, O’Connor pressed he “couldn’t believe what he’d done was even a serious crime” and added that although he’s now “grasped” the seriousness of his offences, he’s “still in disbelief as to how he ended up in court.”
He said his addiction to gaming made it so he “never had a relationship of an intimate nature except online” and claimed to have lived “a lonely, reclusive life for many years”.
(Image: bellathorne/Instagram)
Prosecutors have asked for a sentence of seven years, but O’Connor has launched a petition to be spared jail.
Reacting to the news of his arrest on Instagram, Miss Thorne wrote in 2021: “I want to thank the FBI for searching tirelessly for the person who made my life and others a living hell.”
On deciding to share her own nudes in the wake of the hack, Bella said that she has “felt violated many times in my life, but I thought I didn’t have a way out, so I made a choice.”
(Image: Getty Images for The Latin Recording Academy)
Adding: “My choice. A choice I didn’t want to make but felt I had to because I wouldn’t spend another day feeling someone was taking away from me my body, my soul, my mental health, and my love and hope for the world.”
She wrote: “So thank you, FBI, for a step in the right direction and just one less bad guy to worry about. Today I woke up with hope again, and a weight lifted off my shoulders.”
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Source: Celebrities - dailystar.co.uk
