A British computer hacker who ‘ate himself fat by gaming 18-hours a day’ has begged a US judge to spare him jail after threatened to spread nude images of American actress Bella Thorne.
Joseph O’Connor, 24, accessed Miss Thorne’s phone and Snapchat account in June 2019 and obtained ‘numerous nude photographs and videos’. It is understood that one of his associates then texted the actress and threatened to release the images unless she promoted O’Connor on social media.
O’Connor, who grew up in Liverpool and Spain, was arrested in June 2021 on charges connected to the hacking of more than 130 Twitter accounts in 2020.
He has now told a New York judge that he is ‘deeply ashamed’ of his actions and alleged that he was unaware his threats were an act of ‘serious criminal conduct’ until after he was arrested, The Times reported.
He said his obsession with 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’.
O’Connor added that he is in ‘disbelief’ at how he has ended up ‘a convicted criminal in a place so far away from home’.
Joseph O’Connor, 24, (pictured) accessed Bella Thorne’s phone and Snapchat account in June 2019 and obtained ‘numerous nude photographs and videos’. He has now told a New York judge that he is ‘deeply ashamed’ of his actions and alleged that he was unaware his threats were an act of ‘serious criminal conduct’ until after he was arrested
Instead of meeting the hacker’s demands, Bella Thorne (pictured in Los Angeles last week) decided to share her own nude photographs to Twitter as a means of ‘taking her power back’
O’Connor was arrested in Spain in connection to Miss Thorne’s hack, as well as a monumental hack of Twitter accounts belonging to celebrities and politicians.
He was extricated to the US in April this year and pleaded guilty to seven counts involving cybercrime and conspiring to steal nearly $800,000 of cryptocurrency from a tech company in New York.
Prosecutors have asked for a sentence of seven years, but O’Connor has launched a plea to be spared jail.
The 24-year-old told the judge how his alleged gaming obsession led him to become a recluse and suffer a series of health conditions.
He said he ‘ate himself fat’ by consuming ‘unhealthy’ and ‘processed’ foods. He also ‘never exercised’.
O’Connor told the court how he developed a back injury ‘due to sitting in a chair for 18 hours a day’ and claims his eyes ‘could not tolerate the sunshine’.
‘I could not believe what I had done was even serious criminal conduct,’ he said of his arrest, adding that he now understands the severity of his actions.
Reacting to the news of O’Connor’s arrest in 2021, Bella Thorne thanked the FBI for ‘searching tirelessly’ and, eventually, tracking down one of the men responsible for hacking her Snapchat account in June 2019
At the time of Miss Thorne’s hack, O’Connor had threatened to ‘release nude photos found on the account unless she posted a tweet thanking him for returning her account,’ according to an FBI affidavit.
Instead of acquiescing to the hacker’s demands, the actress decided to share her own nude photographs to Twitter as a means of ‘[taking her] power back.’
Reacting to the news of O’Connor’s 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 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.
‘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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Read more at DailyMail.co.uk