Third Man Charged in Hacking Celebrities' iCloud and Gmail Accounts

An Illinois man is charged with hacking into more than 550 accounts that belong to entertainment industry figures and others.

A federal court charged an Illinois man with hacking into hundreds of iCloud and Gmail accounts, some of which belonged to celebrities, after duping them into sharing their log-in information via a phishing scheme, according to the Department of Justice.

Emilio Herrera, a 32-year-old Chicago resident, signed a plea agreement and is expected to enter a guilty plea to one count of unauthorized access to a protected computer to obtain information under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, the DOJ states.

Herrera sent phishing emails to victims from April 2013 through August 2014 claiming to be from the Internet service providers' security department, the DOJ alleges. Victims were asked to share their username and password information and, after they obliged, Herrera went trolling through their personal information, including private videos and photographs, the DOJ claims.

Herrera, however, is not believed to have uploaded, shared, or to have leaked any of the obtained information, the DOJ states. The 32-year-old Chicago man is the third person to be charged in this phishing case, which resulted in another Illinois man receiving a nine-month federal prison sentence and a Pennsylvania man an 18-month prison sentence.

Read more about Herrera's case here.

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