SANTA MONICA, Calif.—A little over a month after offering a sizable cash reward for information leading to the apprehension of the hacker who took responsibility for leaking unauthorized nude photos of Jennifer Lawrence, McKayla Maroney, Krysten Ritter, and a number of other female celebrities—dubbed "Celebgate" and the "Fappening" by the media—SkweezMe.com has announced that it has passed to the FBI "a large number of leads identifying the possible hacker ..."
Co-founder and managing partner Mike Kulich said in an announcement today that SkweezMe.com received more than 800 e-mails from users associated with the 4Chan website that contained screenshots, e-mail threads and other evidence that mostly pointed to one suspect.
"Sifting through all of the tips was a time-consuming process but we felt the need to step in and try to help find this low life," he added. "A lot of the tips we received were not useful but a number of them pointed to one man and also painted a bigger picture of what was going on. It turns out that there was actually a leaked photo ring made up of a number of different 4Chan users that had been going on for months and these users were trading the photos back and forth with each other. That is why when the leak happened, it wasn't just one celebrity but a number of them. The evidence we received resembled a child porn ring where anonymous users trade and share photos and store the collections on their computers."
At the time of the reward offer, Kulich also tweeted that anyone who was reposting or publishing the unauthorized leaked photos should be guilty of a sex crime.
"I stand by what I said," Kulich says now. "This kind of thing happens every day to civilians. Revenge porn is a huge problem and the adult industry has made our opinion very clear on how we feel about unauthorized pictures being distributed without the person's consent. Unfortunately, most people turned a blind eye to this widening problem until it happened to someone like Jennifer Lawrence."
Kulich also noted that once an arrest is made in the case, the reward will be paid out to the tipster who provided the most reliable information.
