California Man Arrested for Running 'Revenge Porn' Website

cold fjord writes "Yahoo reports, 'A California man was arrested on Tuesday on accusations he ran a 'revenge porn' website, one that featured nude pictures of women often posted by jilted or angry ex-lovers ... The San Diego arrest, the latest action by the state to crack down on such websites, comes after California Governor Jerry Brown signed a first-in-the-nation law in October specifically targeting revenge porn. The law defines revenge porn as the posting of private, explicit photos of other people on the Internet to humiliate them. But authorities did not charge 27-year-old Kevin Bollaert under that law, because it is geared to those who post the incriminating pictures and not those who run websites that feature them .... Bollaert's site, which is no longer operational, had featured over 10,000 sexually explicit photos, and he charged women up to $350 each to remove their photos, officials said. ... Bollaert was charged under a California identity theft law that prohibits using identifying information of a person without their permission, and under anti-extortion legislation, according to court documents. Unlike many other revenge porn websites, Bollaert's site had required users post the photo subject's full name, location, age and a link to the person's Facebook profile, the Attorney General's Office said in a statement.'"

Kinda, sorta extortion. Maybe...

[Huntr]

Charging ppl $350 a pop to remove their photos for which they did not give permission to post? Yeah, go to jail, go directly to jail, do not pass go, do not collect $200.

Re:He could get out of the charge

[DiEx-15]

No.

One of the charges he is being slapped with is extortion. Because, according to the article, he was charging women $350 to remove the images. That is the very definition of extortion as the women had to pay to remove the images.

It is a wonder he isn't being slapped with federal charges of extortion.

The other charge is identity theft. According to the CA laws: He was posting information about these women without their explicit consent. That breaks the ID Theft law there.

That is not to say he will not be forced to turn over the information of all the idiots who posted the nudes. They may still get that info with or without his help. However, he certainly won't get a plea deal out of it if he cooperates because he is being charged with more serious, unrelated issues that the CA Anti-Revenge Porn law doesn't cover.

Re:He could get out of the charge

[McGruber]

He should turn over all of his submission records, in essence handing over the information on hundreds of men who could be charged for posting the photos. They would probably offer him quite the plea deal if he were to do this.

Read the Arrest Warrant: http://oag.ca.gov/system/files/attachments/press_releases/Arrest%20warrant_0.pdf [ca.gov]

There are 31 Felony Counts listed in it. He's not going to get much of a plea deal; the police seized his computers, so they already have "all of his submission records."

Re:So...

[AK Marc]

Just hosting a revenge porn site is legal. California even said as much. His actions toward the people in the images is what's gotten him in trouble. He blackmailed them, and improperly posted personal information about them, in some cases leading to them being identified and harrassed by others who saw the images. If he'd done nothing but host a site that held revenge porn images, and encouraged others to upload them, he wouldn't have been arrested (At least not for any of the charges he was charged with). So running a "revenge porn" site was irrelevant to the issue here.