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The Courts Crime The Internet

'Revenge Porn' Operator Gets 18 Years In Prison 230

Frosty Piss writes Kevin Christopher Bollaert, who operated a 'revenge porn' web site, was been found guilty in February of six counts of extortion and 21 counts of identity theft. He faced a maximum of 23 years in prison. On Friday, April 3rd, he was sentenced to 18 years in prison. The extortion charges stem from a second web site he ran that solicited payments of $250 to $350 from people who wanted to have the photographs deleted. Bollaert made about $30,000 on that site.
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'Revenge Porn' Operator Gets 18 Years In Prison

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  • by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 04, 2015 @11:31AM (#49404871)

    Autoplaying video should be banned from the interwebs

    • Autoplaying video should be banned from the interwebs

      It doesn't need to be banned. It just needs to be (optionally) disabled by browsers.

      • It should be disabled by default, and optionally re-enabled to support video streaming sites where autoplay video makes some sense.

        • by Kergan ( 780543 )

          Autoplaying makes zero sense on streaming sites as well. If you open multiple videos in as many tabs, you want to watch them one by one in sequence, rather than all in parallel because some punk decided that auto-playing was a good thing.

  • by Jim Sadler ( 3430529 ) on Saturday April 04, 2015 @11:53AM (#49404991)
    I realize that it is difficult to achieve a balance in fairness in sentencing but here we have an example of a court getting whacked out. Try and find a single case in which a drunk driver or hit and run driver who has killed someone gets 18 years in jail. Now it is obvious that no one likes to get a couple of hundred bucks ripped out of their wallets such a crime does not come close to killing someone and fleeing the scene. And i know that some people will say it involved more than one victim. But then again big tobacco and big coal kill a lot more than one person every single day and the law allows them to keep right on doing it. Worse yet as tobacco sales fell in the US our tobacco companies exported more and more tobacco to nations in which the population remains completely uneducated and allows children to smoke. The long and short of it is that both our civil and criminal justice systems need a rework from the ground up.
    • by AK Marc ( 707885 ) on Saturday April 04, 2015 @12:10PM (#49405091)
      He got about 1 year per charge. For someone with no remorse and a likelihood of re-offending, that's not excessive. If they had separate trials in sequence, the 3rd felony conviction would likely have landed him a life sentence for 3-strikes. So they went easier on him than the worse-case.
      • by s.petry ( 762400 ) on Saturday April 04, 2015 @04:52PM (#49406507)

        As the person you responded to pointed out, we have an extreme imbalance in US courts dishing out sentencing. Politicians convicted of pretty much any charge get no jail time, where the laymen receive up to life in prison for identical charges. I am of course referring to retired General Petraeus who provided classified information to his girlfriend, while Bradley Manning is spending LIFE in prison for doing the same thing. The difference was in the people, not the crime..

        Face the facts here, the courts wanted to make an "example" of this guy. That is called retribution, it is not called Justice.

        Yeah, I agree that the guy did some slimy crap just to make a few bucks. That said, this sentence ensures the he will never be rehabilitated, ever. This is a demonstration of a failed system of justice, nothing more.

        • Yes, facts like Manning was not sentenced to LIFE in prison, but for 35 years. And facts like Manning leaked far more documents than Petraeus did. And facts like her name is Chelsea Manning.

          Yes, Petraeus's sentence was a joke. But when you're going to be harping on "facts", you kinda need to get yours correct.

          As for this fine gentleman who just got sentenced, he's going to serve about 15 hours per victim (unless he gets paroled or other early release). Less than a day per crime doesn't seem unreasonable

        • by AK Marc ( 707885 )

          Face the facts here, the courts wanted to make an "example" of this guy. That is called retribution, it is not called Justice.

          The fact that there is no justice in the justice system doesn't mean that this case of thousands of extortions was improperly sentenced.

          Yeah, I agree that the guy did some slimy crap just to make a few bucks. That said, this sentence ensures the he will never be rehabilitated, ever. This is a demonstration of a failed system of justice, nothing more.

          Yeah, some guy that does slimy stuff for a few bucks. I could see someone who kidnaps 8 year olds and sells them into slavery having the same thing said about them. Just because you don't find it a problem doesn't mean that others share your opinion.

          • by s.petry ( 762400 )

            Yeah, some guy that does slimy stuff for a few bucks. I could see someone who kidnaps 8 year olds and sells them into slavery having the same thing said about them. Just because you don't find it a problem doesn't mean that others share your opinion.

            You have the opinion that petty embezzlement (250 bucks is petty) is the same thing as kidnapping ans slavery? I think it more likely that the only way to justify your opinion is to invent irrational analogies, which you just did.

            Seriously, you don't believe it better for this guy to repay everyone he took money from illegally and work community service after? Okay, maybe he can't pay back 30-35K, but that's 1-2 years in prison normally. Add in another 2-3 years of community service and the world is goin

            • by AK Marc ( 707885 )

              You have the opinion that petty embezzlement (250 bucks is petty) is the same thing as kidnapping ans slavery?

              Who did embezzlement? This guy did 10,000+ separate blackmails, doxing (with intent to harm), and 10,000 copyright violations. That the prosecutors went for the easy convictions and thought 18 years was enough, so the provable convictions were only for the ones where the people harmed were ones willing to testify doesn't diminish what he did.

              Seriously, you don't believe it better for this guy to repay everyone he took money from illegally and work community service after?

              Yeah, and if you rape a woman and steal her purse, your punishment is to pay back the contents of the purse.

              Do you think the blackmail profits are the only harm from

              • by s.petry ( 762400 )

                No, the guy set up 1 web site where customers submitted content that he hosted on 1 server. How many victims went to the site is not relevant to this type of crime. A guy who robs 1 bank is not brought up on charges for every customer of that bank, he did 1 very wrong act and should pay for that one act. A guy arrested selling crack on the street does not get 1 count for every person who bought the drug, he gets 1 charge.

                I don't like what he did any more than you, but the punishment is completely out of

                • by AK Marc ( 707885 )

                  A guy who robs 1 bank is not brought up on charges for every customer of that bank, he did 1 very wrong act and should pay for that one act.

                  A guy who robs one bank and shoots 6 people in it will be brought up on the 6 shooting charges, as well as the robbery. Your argument is that you get the one (presumably worst) act at any moment, and can't count the others. I find it fatally flawed.

                  • by s.petry ( 762400 )
                    Once again you have to invent things that never happened and make comparisons to the abstract and extreme. This is called delusion, or perhaps psychopathy. Either way, there is no way to debate someone who can't separate fantasy from reality. Not the first time I have said that to you now is it? Nope. All done with this conversation, because psychopaths are never wrong in their minds.
                    • by AK Marc ( 707885 )
                      No, it's called an analogy. You started it, buy have a fit when someone else uses them against you. The guy committed one act (an ongoing act over a long period) that broke multiple laws. You say he should not be responsible for the separate incidents of law-breaking over that period, but one arbitrary charge to cover the whole thing.

                      That's not how the law works.

                      All done with this conversation, because psychopaths are never wrong in their minds.

                      You are living proof of that.

    • Try and find a single case in which a drunk driver or hit and run driver who has killed someone gets 18 years in jail.

      Nailed it!

      http://www.adn.com/article/201... [adn.com]
      http://www.kokomotribune.com/n... [kokomotribune.com]

      And. For the bonus point
      http://www.9news.com/story/new... [9news.com]

      • by FlynnMP3 ( 33498 )

        Not that I've looked for them, but this is the first time I have heard of vehicular homicide under the influence of marijuana.

    • Sounds like he blackmailed the wrong people [politicians] and those who paid also had the wrong sort of influence on his business.

    • Sentence is simple- "Pour encourager les autres".

    • by sjames ( 1099 )

      To make the comparison fair, try finding a drunk driver who caused thousands of accidents in multiple incidents.

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) *

      It appears the long sentence is because they brought 21 counts of identity theft against him, which are served consecutively. In many countries multiple crimes are served concurrently.

      • It appears the long sentence is because they brought 21 counts of identity theft against him, which are served consecutively. In many countries multiple crimes are served concurrently.

        Which I find incomprehensible.

    • The different is intentions. The drunk driver did not want to kill anyone. He is really upset about the whole thing and likely will never do it again specifically because he was involved in the accident in the first place. There is zero reason to put him in jail. The serial cannibal on the other hand who wants nothing more from life than murdering people is not repentant, it was not an accident, and he will kill again if given the opportunity. This guy purposely committed several crimes over the course yea
    • I realize that it is difficult to achieve a balance in fairness in sentencing but here we have an example of a court getting whacked out. Try and find a single case in which a drunk driver or hit and run driver who has killed someone gets 18 years in jail.

      Ah, but this wasn't a single case with a single victim. This was 27 separate charges with literally thousands of victims. It shouldn't be surprising that someone who commits a crime 27 times serves more time than someone who commits it just once, and that yes, even though it may be only a couple of years of time for a single charge, when you aggregate more than two dozen charges, the time starts approaching that served for a more heinous crime.

      For comparison, would you say that it was an example of a court

    • by nbauman ( 624611 )

      I also thought that 18 years was pretty harsh, compared to the penalties for crimes in which the victim dies.

      His problem: He managed to hit every hot button that makes a defendant unsympathetic. Posting naked pictures of women that were stolen for the purpose of humiliating and harming them is essentially on-line sexual abuse. Blackmail is another hot button.

      That's the way the system works. If you make enemies of a lot of angry, articulate, politically influential victims and their families out for revenge,

  • Had it been a woman, it'd have been 18 months.

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