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Think of your own life. It's only when you look backwards, you see how it was all connected. Lessons in Chemistry is nominated for 10 Emmys, including Outstanding Limited Series. Our greatest discoveries come when you expose yourself to the unknown. Outstanding Lead Actress, Brie Larson. Fantastic. Outstanding Supporting Actor, Lewis Pullman. You can count on it. Outstanding Supporting Actress, Asia Naomi King. You think you can't do it?
Lessons in Chemistry is a triumph. That is worthy of applause. Lessons in Chemistry, now streaming on Apple TV+. Hello. I just wanted to let you know that Swindled returns with brand new episodes on August 7th. But in the meantime, I figured now would be a good time to revisit a classic episode for no particular reason at all. This is The Revenger, published back in December 2019.
It's about Hunter Moore, a middle school dropout that creates a revenge porn website and becomes quote-unquote the most hated man on the internet. Mind your blood pressure on this one. Again, Swindled returns on August 7th. If you can't wait, we just released two new bonus episodes to our valued listeners. One is about a pro wrestling fan who attacked WWE superstar Seth Rollins at a live event because of, well, you'll see.
and the other is about a Minnesota man who claims the Antifa burned his property because of his proudly displayed Trump signs. You can listen to those by becoming a valued listener on Spotify, Patreon, or Apple. Or you can go to valuedlistener.com. Thank you. This episode of Swindled may contain graphic descriptions or audio recordings of disturbing events which may not be suitable for all audiences. Listener discretion is advised.
Melinda had no idea what was happening. She could not keep up with all of the notifications that were flooding her phone.
There were hundreds of them. Instant messages, Facebook friend requests, emails, texts, most of them of similar nature, mostly unsolicited dick pics and graphic sexual advances. Melinda had no idea why this was happening until she received a message that read, quote, You got posted, which included a link to a website, yougotposted.com. Melinda clicked the link and could not believe what stared back at her.
A website containing nude photos of herself from years ago, along with all of her personal information like her full name, age, and hometown, with links to her Facebook and Instagram profiles. This could not be happening. Melinda found an email address for the website's administrator. "Take my pictures down now," she wrote. "Because of this site, my phone has been going off every two minutes with strange men sending inappropriate things to me. It's disgusting.
I don't know what gets you off about ruining people's lives, but I was underaged in the photos you posted of me. So yes, you are showing child pornography. Melinda pressed send. Within hours, she received a reply directing her to a different website, changemyreputation.com, which promised to remove the photographs for a small payment of $350. Whatever, just make it go away. Melinda paid the extortioner's fee, and so did approximately 100 other women.
From December 2012 to September 2013, ChangeMyReputation.com had collected more than $30,000 in payments from people desperate to remove their intimate photos from YouGotPosted.com. Teachers, wives, daughters, and mothers exposed for the world to see. Organized by Locale.
Of course, many of these women contacted the police, and in July 2013, the state of California, where the domain names of the websites were registered, launched an investigation. The state obtained a search warrant related to the website's email account, but the owner never complied, even though authorities already knew his name. Kevin Bolliart, a 28-year-old web developer in San Diego,
Kevin was already on probation for using a post office box number rather than a home address on applications for 31 semi-automatic firearms that he had acquired from various weapons dealers. He planned to hoard the guns to sell later when the leftists eventually came to collect. But since only 230 school shootings have occurred since Columbine, there was no need for drastic measures in the United States of America. Everything is fine.
Which meant that Kevin Bolliart would need to find a new way to make a quick buck. And he did. Kevin built a website where jilted ex-lovers and hackers could anonymously submit sexually explicit photographs without the consent of the photographed subjects. Usually as an act of revenge to humiliate or embarrass or harass the victims. And Kevin built a sister site to extort them. Revenge porn, as it has become known, has ruined careers and relationships.
It inflicts irreparable damage to reputations and mental health. It's been linked to suicides all over the globe. It's morally bankrupt and emotionally violent. But for those like Kevin Bolliart, who peddled in it, the pay was decent enough to ignore all of its negative consequences. Kind of. Yeah, the whole idea was to make money, but...
But you didn't, Kevin. That's why he received a letter from California's Senior Assistant Attorney General in response to his noncompliance of the search warrant. Kevin responded to the letter and an interview was set up between himself and the AG's office where he would attempt to explain himself. Quote,
At the beginning it was fun and entertaining but now it's just like ruining my life. I realize like this is not a good situation. I feel bad about the whole thing and like I just don't want to do it anymore. I mean I know a lot of people are getting screwed over on a site like this. Yeah I wish I could go back to my life in PV before I made the website. I wish I could have done something more positive.
In December 2013, the state conducted a search of Bolliart's home and vehicle and seized three laptops and an iPad. There were more than 10,000 private nude photographs of unsuspecting victims on his hard drive. Kevin Bolliart was arrested and charged with 31 counts, including identity theft, extortion, and conspiracy. He had also been sued by Melinda for the posting of her underage photos.
Bolliart never responded to the summons, so Melinda was awarded a default judgment of $385,000. At his trial in February 2015, Kevin Bolliart's lawyer agreed that her client's business was gross and offensive, but it wasn't against the law, since others had submitted the photos. And if it was against the law, well, she argued that Kevin Bolliart just didn't know any better.
The prosecution disagreed and alleged that what Bolliart had created was an intentional tool of destruction. He's told us exactly who he is. He is a vindictive individual who takes pleasure out of harming people. Kevin Bolliart was found guilty of six counts of extortion and 21 counts of identity theft. At a sentencing hearing on April 3rd, 2015, he was forced to face his victims. Eight women spoke in court.
They described how being featured on YouGotPosted.com had affected their lives. I am afraid for my safety. I'm still contacted periodically on Facebook, LinkedIn. I can't have the same type of internet presence that I feel that I should have been able to have. They described how those photographs still haunt them. Two years later, the images might have been removed from the website, but...
And they described how since being featured on his website, everything had fallen apart. Even though YouGotPosted.com had been removed from the internet, the damage had already been done. Kevin Bolliart appeared remorseful.
He even shed a tear in court, but the state of California needed to send a message so that this would never happen again. It's the first ever conviction of a website operator under California's new revenge porn law, and it carries what could be a long prison sentence. Kevin Bullard was sentenced to 18 years in county jail and was ordered to pay $10,000 in restitution. His sentence would later be reduced to eight years in prison after arguing that the local jail wasn't properly equipped for his rehabilitation.
but it was still a landmark case. The first conviction under California's new revenge porn law that was enacted in October 2013. The first law of its kind. This is California's Attorney General at the time, Kamala Harris.
The brave witnesses who testified and many thousands of other victims of his crimes described fearing for their lives, losing their jobs. If you think that just because you're sitting behind a computer committing what is essentially a cowardly and criminal act, you will not be shielded from the law or jail.
Before this new law, revenge porn website operators were shielded from liability by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, which provides immunity to the website when users submit illegal content, suggesting that they are merely providers of the platform with no control over what its users upload. Think about it. You'd never see Google or Facebook going to court on child porn charges, right? No, it would be the user that submitted the content instead.
Revenge porn websites made the same argument in their defense, and technically they were correct. However, the new revenge porn law enacted by California in 2013 made it a misdemeanor for those like Kevin Bolliart who posted identifiable nude photos of other people online without their consent with the intent of causing emotional distress or humiliation. It's a very specific law aimed at a very specific type of website.
It offers victims a path to justice, finally, because that hasn't always existed. There was a reason California's revenge porn law was enacted in the first place. That reason is named Hunter Moore. A self-described scumbag creates a wildly popular website based on bullying and revenge to become the most hated man on the internet on this episode of Swindled.
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Hunter Moore dropped out of Woodland Christian School in 8th grade. Even though he was a shy kid, Hunter kept getting into fights with his classmates and mouthing off to teachers until ultimately he decided he had better things to do. With nothing but time to kill and an entrepreneurial spirit,
Hunter's attention turned to the internet. Hunter Moore spent his remaining teenage years launching various online endeavors. He sold clothes, created a gaming forum, ran a music website, but nothing really took off. Not even his AOL instant messenger bot, entitled WHS Party Scene, that informed its teenage users about house parties around Sacramento.
So at 19 years old and in need of cash, Hunter Moore got a real job working the register at a skate store called Zoomies in a Sacramento mall. It wasn't the most exciting gig in the world, but it was a good way to meet girls. Hunter worked a few times a week while he attended beauty school until one day there was a little incident with the store's manager.
But here's the fucked up thing. I basically got raped at work, right? Almost. Yeah, that's how I made $300,000 in three months. Hunter would later share with the Daily Beast the details of that incident. Quote,
I sued the company. Moore and two other Zoomies employees filed a sexual harassment lawsuit against Zoomies. Hunter claims to have received as much as $300,000 in the settlement. Not to discount the trauma of the incident, but it was a welcomed windfall for the aimless 19-year-old, who had since moved to Brooklyn. Hunter would use his newfound riches to travel the world.
He went on tour with the band as their manager and rented a place in San Francisco. Then he moved to Australia to hang out with the girl he had met on Myspace before eventually returning to New York in 2010 with less than $150 in his pocket. A fool and his money are soon parted. Back in the Big Apple, Hunter was struggling. He was surviving on sodas and Sour Patch Kids while styling hair at porno shoots for a modest wage.
Hunter Moore refers to these days as the darkest period of his life, telling the All, "I've never been so close to killing myself before. I had no money and was in serious debt. I went from the highest point in my life to the lowest. I just fucked up. No one that age should get that much money." Hunter Moore, although down on his luck, was still finding luck with the ladies, which he loved to brag about.
He would often share nude photos of his latest flings with his friends while tallying the notches on his bedpost. And the rapidly evolving technology at the time only made it easier to be a creep.
When photos of his most recent conquest failed to send through text message, Hunter decided to upload the photos to his latest neglected online venture, a nightlife travel guide called "Is Anyone Up?" that would feature club reviews and lurid stories. Hunter said he never got around to finishing the project because he was quote "doing too many drugs" and for some reason I believe him. But then something unexpected happened. Traffic for "Is Anyone Up?" began to spike.
14,000 unique visitors in a single day. Apparently a few online forums had somehow stumbled across the photos of Hunter's naked girlfriend that nobody but his friends were supposed to see. The surprise on Hunter's face was illuminated by the light bulb that appeared above his head. The site was just born actually. It was just a couple of friends and you know we had our hearts broken by a couple of girls and we thought we would
you know, make a site and just between us and a couple people got a hold of it and it became "Is Anyone Up?" and that's how it started. Well, it all started with, you know, me hating some dumb bitch who
Broke my heart, really. And that's how it started, dude. Trying to get back at somebody in revenge, basically. Is anyone up? It's where revengeful exes come for peace of mind. Your ex-girlfriend who you've done dirty, she can come to my site and we will take care of her.
IsAnyoneUp.com was a website where disgruntled exes, recent hookups, or vengeful enemies would anonymously submit nude and sexually explicit photos of unsuspecting individuals for the desired effect of humiliation. The site featured both men and women from anywhere in the world. Nobody was off limits. Moore would upload submissions to the blog-style homepage of his website and include additional identifying information.
such as screenshots of the subject's facebook twitter tumblr accounts etc and include a gif reaction or a clever remark underneath the photos was a comment section where visitors would usually discuss the victim's physical appearance using the most grotesque terms it made youtube comments seem like a minsa forum in comparison the website's slogan was quote pure evil
Yeah, you just click the submit button, you fucking put that dumb motherfucker's Facebook in there and throw his little picture of his little dick and a normal picture of him so we know what he looks like. And that was it. And then I'd put a stupid little reaction picture and call you little dick man. I don't know.
Within days of its launch, "Is Anyone Up?" was receiving 20-30 submissions a day and quickly found a niche in the emo and pop-punk music scenes that were at max popularity in the early aughts. Photos of young, tattooed girls with dyed hair, Monroe piercings, and live journals were driving traffic to the site. Some of the girls even submitted their own nude selfies because they lacked the attention. The scene boys were not immune either.
especially those in relatively popular bands. Naked photos of members of musical acts like All Time Low, Emma Rosa, A Day to Remember, and Passion Pit were leaked to the site and Twitter exploded. Hunter Moore relished the attention that his brush with minor celebrity dong had thrust upon him. One band even faked a sex tape in conjunction with the website to promote their new song.
Later, several D-list celebrities discovered that their private nude photos graced the pages of Is Anyone Up? without their blessing. There was a former Toronto Maple Leafs hockey player, an ultimate frisbee champion, an American Idol finalist, and more. When Brandi Passante, a star from the exhilarating A&E reality show about storage facility auctions, discovered that her nude photos appeared on the site, she hired a lawyer and sued Hunter Moore for defamation.
Mr. Moore responded by sending Brandy's lawyer a photo of his penis with an attached statement that read, "My lawyer wanted me to know if Brandy missed this. Please get back to me as soon as possible." Hunter Moore fully embraced his new role as a public enemy, and he had an entire fan club cheering him on. Less than a year after its launch, IsAnyoneUp.com was receiving 30 million page views per month.
At its peak, the website was generating between $20,000 to $30,000 in monthly revenue. Hunter Moore had become an online celebrity. He toured the country DJing in clubs and doing blow in the bathrooms. Over time, his website evolved to incorporate his own personal brand. Hunter shared nude photos of himself and tales of drunken sexual debauchery that were reminiscent of Bukowski, if Bukowski had been addicted to sniffing glue.
Hunter was a self-indulgent clown like Tucker Max, but somehow even more full of shit. Yet teenage girls wanted him and teenage boys wanted to be him. Hunter Moore was a bad boy, a cult of personality that attracted the kind of disaffected youth that can be found on every city block in every country. His fans called themselves "The Family" and many of them would do anything for their leader's approval, even if it meant making life hard on themselves.
In a Twitter contest organized by Hunter, a kid from Indiana was crowned the winner of the Piss Olympics after he shared a video of himself adding some additional toppings to someone's food at the restaurant where he worked. "Cameron Jankowski will likely be fired from a Taco Bell in Fort Wayne, Indiana after tweeting a photo of himself allegedly urinating on an order of nachos to impress Hunter Moore." Par for the course.
when Hunter announced on Twitter that he would be giving an iPhone to the person that recorded themselves performing the most disgusting act. A 19-year-old girl, who already owned an iPhone by the way, submitted a video of herself brushing her teeth with her own feces using a pink princess toothbrush.
The website Thought Catalog later interviewed the girl involved, since that's what passes for a celebrity these days, and the writer asked her if she felt like Hunter Moore had exploited her. Shitbreath responded, quote,
But not everybody liked being the butt of the joke, especially the women whose photos were featured on Hunter Moore's website without their consent. I was just, it was kind of that feeling where your heart drops to your stomach and you don't know what to do. On Facebook, I got over 400 messages from people around the world I didn't even know.
A lot of creepy ones, a lot of ones that scared me a little bit. The first time I left my house after that got posted, I went to Taco Bell and the guy at Taco Bell was like, hey, I saw you naked. It was a Tuesday afternoon sometime in 2011. A young girl in her mid-twenties, let's call her Margo, was eating lunch alone at a restaurant when she received an email from an anonymous person. The email read, quote, someone is trying to make life very difficult for you.
Attached was a link to a website that Margo had never heard of. When she clicked the link, Margo was greeted with the worst: nude photos of herself along with her full name and a screenshot of her Facebook profile. Margo tried to gauge how widespread the images had become and searched for her name on Google. Links to the photos comprised the first 10 pages of results. Margo knew who did this. It was Theo, her ex-boyfriend. He was a jealous psycho who wouldn't go away.
But since she was 18 years old in the photos, the police said there was nothing they could do. Since Theo had the photographs in his possession, technically they were his property and he could do with them whatever he pleased. Margo was not satisfied with that answer, but she could not afford a lawyer. She was able to file a copyright takedown request, but the service for Is Anyone Up resided in foreign countries beyond U.S. jurisdiction. The email she sent to Hunter Moore asking him to remove the photos went ignored.
There were no other actions to take. In fact, those nude photos, which have been duplicated all across the internet, are still easily found today. Margot had to legally change her name to get away from them. But in the back of her mind, Margot knows that they're still there, waiting to be discovered.
Hunter Moore did not care. He had heard it all before. Sometimes he would even publish the takedown request on the website and openly mock the victims who were pleading for help.
Hunter surmised that it wasn't his fault that these people made a stupid decision to trust someone they should not have trusted. In a perfect world, he told BetaBeat, there would be no bullying, and there would be no people like me, and there would be no sites like mine, but we don't live in a perfect world.
Yeah, I understand you were... I don't know how you can point your finger at me. You took the picture. I mean, I've been justifying this in my head for over a year and a half of, you know, the site, you know, what I do and the site that I run. But at the end of the day, it started with you and you took these pictures. I don't know how old you are, but I'm sure, you know, you're smart and go to school. I mean, it's 2012. What do you expect to happen? Somebody's going to monetize this. I mean, and I was the person to do it.
Hunter's firm stance against accountability and willingness to say anything made him a favorite on the media circuit. Many of the women featured on Is Anyone Up? were hesitant to come forward in fear of publicizing the website and spreading it even further.
Yet celebrity doctors like Dr. Drew and Illuminati spawn like Anderson Cooper had no issue with featuring Hunter Moore and his website on their respective shows and in a way profiting off of the very same content they were rallying against. You do know what you're doing is sleazy, right?
The media's willingness to provide free marketing for Hunter Moore under the guise of an expose launched its AnyoneUp's website views through the roof.
A perfect example of the Streisand effect in action. A phenomenon named after that one time when Barbra Streisand's attempts to get images of one of her houses removed from the internet only drew more public attention to those images, thus accomplishing the exact opposite of Babs' desired result. The media is good at that, but they're only giving their audiences what they want, right? Sex sells. Controversy sells. A good villain never hurts.
Movies about violent loners are breaking box office records, while true crime podcasts continue to top the charts. A good train wreck is fun to watch, isn't it? It's the reason you pressed play on this episode, is it not? It's the same reason traffic slows to a crawl when there's an accident on the other side of the highway. People are animals. Maybe we only have ourselves to blame. At least we know Hunter Moore wasn't going to blame himself.
Yeah, I mean, I'm going to grow and change as a person, but right now, this time, I'm going to take full advantage of people's mistakes and what I've created. And the law was on his side. Protected by the Communications Decency Act, there was no recourse for his victims, of which there were a lot. Moore claimed to receive a million cease and desist letters a day, including one from Facebook, for using screenshots of their platform on his website.
Facebook banned Hunter Moore and any mention of his anyone up in December 2011. Hunter Moore told Gawker that he responded to the social media giant's letter with a quote, Picture of my dick. It was Hunter Moore versus the world. Just a businessman selling your goods with a total disregard of the consequences. When the Village Voice asked Hunter what he would do if someone committed suicide as a result of his website, he responded quote,
Nothing could deter Hunter Moore from his quest for money and fame. Not even the time when a woman featured on his website showed up to his doorstep and stabbed him in the shoulder with a Bic pen. Hunter's wound required medical treatment.
Of course, he posted a photograph of the stitches on his Tumblr feed. Violence sells too. But it was the last time Hunter Moore posted someone from his local area on his "Anyone Up." Bad things were no fun when they were happening to him, and they were starting to add up. Which is maybe why, in April 2012, at the peak of his popularity, Hunter Moore surprised everybody by selling his "Anyone Up" to an anti-bullying organization. The pioneering website of revenge porn was dead.
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No, I'm a human being. Like, I don't want to hurt people. I don't like people suffering. And, you know, the site, you know, it got a little too crazy too fast. On April 19th, 2012, visitors to IsAnyOneUp.com were redirected to a different, unfamiliar website. A website called Bullyville, which included resources for people who had been bullied. The website was owned by a former Marine named James McGibney.
On the front page of Bullyville was a farewell letter from Hunter Moore. It began, quote,
Hunter explains in the letter that the website was becoming too expensive to maintain. He has said elsewhere that the server costs alone were $8,000 a month and was only getting more expensive thanks to his prime-time media appearances on shows like Anderson Cooper. But the deciding factor for shuttering the website came down to some of the content he was forced to sort through. Quote,
Moore claimed that he'd receive at least 50-60 nude photos of underage kids every day, and not just 17-year-old girls. It was 12-year-olds and 9-year-olds. Quote,
In the letter, Hunter Moore also addressed how the decision was made to sell Is Anyone Up? and what was next for him personally. "I've become friends with the founder of Bullyville, and he helped me realize that my talents in the programming and social networking world could be channeled in a positive way, and we spoke about ways to move on, which is ultimately what I've decided to do. I might do some writing on Bullyville.com to help people who have been bullied. I've been on both sides of the fence.
I am putting this message up on Bullyville.com to stand up for underage bullying. I think it's important that everyone realizes the damage that online bullying can cause. I would love to write everything here, but I can't. I'll miss you all, but once you're on page two, nobody cares anymore. Moore made another announcement later that same day in an interview with Gawker that made people who had been featured on his website breathe a sigh of relief. Quote, "...anybody that was ever posted where it's been ruining your life or your job."
Everything is completely wiped. You're good." Bullyville founder James McGibney followed up Hunter's statement with one of his own. He explained why he had purchased the notorious website for $15,000 and then closed it. "Is anyoneup.com served no public good? That is why it is offline. The problem is now solved. In its place, Bullyville.com will exist to help people who are being bullied solve their problems through cooperation and thoughtfulness rather than abuse."
McGibney told Gawker that he had received an immediate blast of positive responses from people who had been affected by the website. Thankfully, Hunter Moore had finally seen the light. Or maybe not. Less than three days later, Hunter Moore was back to bullying people on Twitter, including James McGibney.
Dude, I'll be completely fucking honest. I'm going to buy a ticket to Vegas, probably tonight. Make sure I'm sick. Find that fool's fucking wife and make his kids watch me fuck his wife. In predictable fashion, drunken Hunter Moore not only threatened to rape James McGibney's wife in front of his children, Moore accused McGibney of being a pedophile. He also bragged about the troll job he had pulled off by selling his revenge porn website to an anti-bullying group. Moore told Beta Bee, quote,
I literally had a half pound of cocaine on a fucking table with like 16 of my friends and we were just busting up laughing taking turns writing this stupid letter. I think bullying is bullshit and it's just a soccer mom fad. Obviously those threats and accusations did not sit well with the former Marine. James McGivney sued Hunter Moore for defamation.
I was trying to sell it for months. And then, you know, I thought, you know, selling it to an anti-bullying site was the biggest troll move I could ever make. And then, obviously, it just came down to money. I mean, dude, without bullying, I mean, I don't know what I'd do. I don't know who I'd be. But whatever, dude, it was all bullshit. It was all trolling. And now the dude who bought my site is trying to sue me because he owes me a bunch of money. I said I'd rape his wife in front of his kids when I was drunk.
Hunter Moore did everything he could to avoid being served a subpoena related to the lawsuit, including physically hiding in his parents' house. And he was successful for a few months. But one night at 2 a.m., after returning home from a late-night fast-food run, Hunter got out of his car and spotted an unfamiliar person walking towards him, envelope in hand.
Hunter panicked and attempted to flee on foot but tripped and fell, spilling food all over his driveway. There was no getting out of it this time. Hunter Moore had been formally served to appear in court while sitting in his driveway, covered in, you guessed it, Taco Bell. And for Hunter, as with most experiences involving Taco Bell,
This would not end well. Epic troll. But Hunter Moore still had not learned his lesson.
In November 2012, Hunter announced that he was launching a new website which he claimed would be the quote "scariest thing on the internet". It would be called HunterWar.tv and would be similar to IsAnyoneUp in regards to allowing people to submit revenge porn. Hunter even claimed that all of the content from his old site would resurface quote "All these people that thought they were safe? Nah, it's all gonna be back." And he told BetaBeat that his new website would take it a step further quote
Hunter expounded on this feature in an interview with The Daily. Hunter Moore later retracted these plans when talking to Salon.com a few weeks later.
He told them that he was drunk and coked out during his interview with the Observer, and that he only planned to reveal the home addresses of people who had personally wronged him. Well, I'm coming out with a new site. Well, it's HunterMoore.tv. It was HunterMoore.net. But...
Yeah, I'm doing a reality series, kind of like Insomniac 2.0. Nice. I'm just going to go around the country, meet kids off Twitter, social network, and do what kids do in their city, kind of like we're doing here. And, you know, bringing social networking back and, you know, fuck Facebook, dude. Like, it's all about meeting new friends and doing crazy shit. But it was too late to backtrack. Hunter Moore had caught the attention of someone who was far better at the internet than he was.
Greetings citizens of the world. We are Anonymous. In December 2012, Anonymous, the decentralized international hacktivist group, released a call to action against Hunter Moore and HunterMoore.tv.
Operation Hunt Hunter was underway. This is a call to all of Anonymous. We will hold Hunter Moore accountable for his actions. We will protect anyone who is victimized by abuse of our internet. We will prevent the stalking, rape, and possible murders as byproduct of his sites. Operation AnniBully. Operation Hunt Hunter engaged. We are Anonymous. We are Legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget. Hunter Moore, expect us.
Within days, Anonymous had successfully launched a denial of service attack against Hunter Moore's new site, taking it offline. And they released a file containing personal information, including Hunter's home address, names of his family members, and his social security and phone numbers. Hunter responded to the attack with a tweet that simply read, LOL, not even Anonymous could phase this dude. Was there anyone out there that could stop him?
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My daughter had never sent her topless picture to anyone. She'd taken the picture in the mirror with her cell phone and sent it through her email to get to her computer, and she was hacked. Kayla Laws was 24 years old in October 2011 when she used her cell phone to snap over 100 photos of herself mimicking sexy poses in her bedroom mirror. They were photos that Kayla never intended to share with anyone. She was just having a little fun.
After transferring the images from her phone to her computer, Kayla basically forgot about them, but she was reminded of their existence. On January 10th, 2012, Kayla started receiving friend requests on Facebook from random people, along with sexually explicit comments and rude messages. Legendary porn star Ron Jeremy even reached out to her to discuss business. What the hell was going on?
Eventually, Kayla was tipped off that the one topless photo that she had taken three months earlier had been submitted to isanyoneup.com. She had been hacked. In full panic mode, Kayla immediately called her mother. Charlotte Laws was no ordinary mother. She was a former city council member from Valley Glen in Los Angeles and worked as a private investigator back in the 80s.
After speaking with her inconsolable daughter, Charlotte went into action, collecting any information she could find on Hunter Moore and his website, and began compiling a homemade dossier. Charlotte's home office transformed into what she called a CIA command post, while her daughter Kayla retreated from the world and locked herself into her bedroom, like victims of sexual assault commonly do.
Charlotte Laws couldn't stand to see her daughter like this. She became obsessed with getting that photo removed. Of course, requests for takedowns sent to Hunter Moore went nowhere. And there was no such thing as a revenge porn expert with whom Charlotte could consult. So Charlotte Laws became an expert in revenge porn herself, even though that's not necessarily her favorite term for what Hunter Moore was doing. It's pure misogyny, she told The Guardian. It's about hating women. It's about hurting them.
That's the whole purpose of the site. It wasn't about the pictures. There were hundreds of people self-submitting photos, but they're not victims because they are saying, hey, you can post my nude picture. But that wasn't interesting. The thing is humiliating people. The kind of people who would never post their photo on a site like that and who have a lot to lose, who have high profile jobs or could have their entire life destroyed. That's what he found enjoyable. That's what his followers found enjoyable.
Charlotte had been in touch with some of the other women that had been featured on Is Anyone Up?
One of the women Charlotte Laws had to break the news to was a kindergarten teacher who had just been escorted off of school grounds when she was handed a note by the secretary to return Charlotte Laws' phone call. When she did, Charlotte told the teacher that naked photos of her had been posted to Is Anyone Up? and that Hunter Moore's cult had been bombarding the school with those photos, along with crude remarks such as, quote,
The school's principal had interrupted the teacher's lesson and pulled her out of class in front of her five-year-old students. Another woman had photographs of her bloodied and bandaged post-surgery breasts posted to the site, photographs that had been taken in her doctor's office. There were also topless weight loss shots of some women that had been used to track their progress, while other women, normal, ordinary women, found that their faces had been photoshopped onto someone else's nude body.
They had not even taken any risque photos that were in danger of leaking. These women had been punished for simply existing. But one of the most important things that Charlotte Laws discovered from talking to the victims is that there was usually no revenge involved. Out of the 40 victims she spoke to, Laws found that 40% of them had been hacked and that they had been hacked by the same man, Gary Jones, a name that had contacted them on Facebook.
Charlotte Laws brought her evidence to the LAPD where she met with a female detective who asked condescendingly, quote, Why would you take a picture like this if you didn't want it on the internet? Needless to say, the police department was of little help. So Charlotte Laws contacted the FBI and pressured them to open an investigation. And she was able to have her daughter Kayla's photos removed after passing the news to Hunter Moore's attorney.
Two years after Charlotte Laws began her own personal investigation, Hunter Moore and a hacker named Charles Evans, a.k.a. Gary Jones, were arrested. I was just at home and, uh,
Hunter Moore had to have known it was coming. He had threatened to burn down the Village Voice's office when they asked him to comment on the investigation a year earlier.
Many assume it's the reason Hunter had sold his anyone up to Bullyville in the first place. He wasn't some master troll or some tough guy. Hunter Moore was terrified and was trying to unload water from his sinking ship. Moore's accomplice, Charles Evans, was a 25-year-old alcoholic living in Studio City. From December 2011 to March 2012, Hunter Moore had paid him more than $2,000 for the hacked selfies of seven individuals, including Kayla Laws.
CNN's Lori Siegel spoke with Charles Evans. It was the hacking that brought Hunter Moore to justice, since revenge porn laws did not exist at the time.
But thanks to Hunter Moore, that was about to change.
On February 19, 2015, Hunter Moore pleaded guilty to hacking and identity theft.
He was sentenced to two and a half years in prison with three years of supervised release and ordered to pay a $2,000 fine. The hacker, Charles Evans, was sentenced to 25 months in prison, a $2,000 fine, and ordered to pay a very specific $145.70 in restitution to one of the victims for lost wages as a result of his hacking. After almost two years in prison, in May 2017, now 31 years old,
Hunter Moore entered a residential re-entry program that helps inmates re-acclimate to the outside world. He spoke with RDAP Dan, a prison coach on Dan's YouTube channel in April 2018 about his experience in the prison system and his anxiety leading up to it. You know, you have in your mind like this really is just like propaganda of like what the prison system is actually like and you know it's just entertainment that you're seeing on TV
So obviously I'm like, what? I got to join a gang. Like I got to, you know, start working out. You know, I got to learn jujitsu. I got to do something to protect my anus. Nice to see Hunter's charm still intact. As for what's next. What's next for Hunter Moore? What are your plans? We know you're working on a book.
As of December 2019, there are still no revenge porn laws at the federal level in the United States.
But since 2013, 46 of the 50 states have passed some kind of anti-revenge porn legislation. Only Wyoming, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Massachusetts have yet to act. Australia and the United Kingdom have passed similar laws as well. But even with the legislation in place and Hunter Moore locked away, revenge porn is alive and well.
In fact, in addition to Kevin Bolliart's You Got Posted, another copycat website called isanybodydown.com was shut down by the FTC in 2015, but no fines or charges were ever filed. Afterwards, in 2018, the site's owner, a man named Craig Britton, attempted to run for the congressional seat vacated by Arizona Senator Jeff Flake, but never made it out of the primaries.
Britton's slogan was "Great America Wins" and his campaign website was DefeatSocialismAgain.com. It's still up if you want to peek into far-right lunacy. Craig Britton and his revenge porn past may have failed to make it into the United States Congress, but revenge porn still found its way to Capitol Hill.
Democratic Representative Katie Hill, once a rising star in the Democratic Party, addressing the floor of the House in an emotional final speech after giving up her congressional seat amid an ethics scandal. The 32-year-old's resignation comes less than a year after she took office. Amid allegations, she engaged in an improper relationship with one of her congressional staffers, which House rules forbid. I don't want to see a judge.
Rumors of the allegations began as nude photos of Hill were leaked online. Hill, who was in the midst of a nasty divorce, has accused her husband, Kenny Heslop, of leaking the photos in an act of revenge porn. In October 2019, nude photos of U.S. Representative Katie Hill were leaked online to conservative blogs by her ex-husband, along with details of an alleged affair she had engaged in with a campaign staffer.
Representative Hill resigned from office amid the scandal. She has vowed to fight revenge porn when she leaves office. This is a portion of Katie Hill's final speech in the House of Representatives. This is the last speech that I will give from this floor as a member of Congress. I wasn't ready for my time here to come to an end so soon. I am leaving now because of a double standard. I am leaving because I no longer want to be used as a bargaining chip.
I'm leaving because I didn't want to be peddled by papers and blogs and websites used by shameless operatives for the dirtiest gutter politics that I've ever seen and the right-wing media to drive clicks and expand their audience by distributing intimate photos of me taken without my knowledge, let alone my consent, for the sexual entertainment of millions.
I'm leaving because of a misogynistic culture that gleefully consumed my naked pictures, capitalized on my sexuality, and enabled my abusive ex to continue that abuse, this time with the entire country watching. I am leaving because of the thousands of vile, threatening emails, calls, and texts that made me fear for my life and the lives of the people that I care about.
The forces of revenge by a bitter, jealous man, cyber exploitation and sexual shaming that target our gender and a large segment of society that fears and hates powerful women have combined to push a young woman out of power and say that she doesn't belong here. Yet a man who brags about his sexual predation, who's had dozens of women come forward to accuse him of sexual assault,
who pushes policies that are uniquely harmful to women, and who has filled the courts with judges who proudly rule to deprive women of the most fundamental right to control their own bodies, sits in the highest office of the land. And so today, as my last vote, I voted on impeachment proceedings. Not just because of corruption, obstruction of justice, or gross misconduct, but because of the deepest abuse of power, including the abuse of power over women.
Today, as my final act, I voted to move forward with the impeachment of Donald Trump on behalf of the women of the United States of America. We will not stand down. We will not be broken. We will not be silenced. We will rise and we will make tomorrow better than today. Thank you and I yield the balance of my time for now, but not forever. If you or someone you know is a victim of revenge porn, you're not alone.
There are resources out there that can help. Start with the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative at CyberCivilRights.org or call their crisis helpline at 844-878-2274. Good luck. Swindled is written, researched, produced, and hosted by me, a concerned citizen, with original music by Trevor Howard.
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