'Revenge Porn' Website Owner Given 18-Year Jail Sentence

The brains behind the "revenge porn" website based in California, which has been shut down, was sentenced last Friday to 18 years in prison, authorities said.

Kevin Christopher Bollaert, 27, was found guilty last February of six counts of extortion and 21 counts of identity theft, CNN reported.

In December 2012, Bollaert created ugotposted.com, a website that allowed people to post sexually explicit materials of people even without their permission, prosecutors said.

Unlike other revenge porn websites, where photos are anonymous, ugotposted.com required the poster to include full details of the subject, California Attorney General Kamala Harris said.

The explicit material on the website mostly showed women and were usually posted by angry ex-boyfriends and former husbands. The people featured in the said material had their real names and links to their Facebook profiles posted.

Harris said it marked the first criminal prosecution of a cyber-exploitation website operator in the U.S.

Bollaert also created a parallel website called changemyreputation.com, which charged customers $250 to $350 for the removal of the explicit photos in ugotposted.com.

Bollaert raked in an easy income of around $30,000 from that second website, according to the attorney general's office.

"Sitting behind a computer, committing what is essentially a cowardly and criminal act will not shield predators from the law or jail," Harris said. "We will continue to be vigilant and investigate and prosecute those who commit these deplorable acts."

Bollaert's victims spoke in court in San Diego, describing the damage done to their reputations.

"My life has gone through a down-spiral," one of the victims told Judge David Gill. She said she had been repudiated by her own mother because of the shame she brought on her family.

Another victim, Nicole, said: "I have a hard time acknowledging Mr. Bollaert as a human being. I can't get away from the devastation."

Bollaert's father expressed his apology to his son's victims during the hearing. "How sorry we are here today because of a shameful, stupid, inappropriate thing my son did. My heart goes out to all of you," he said.

Bollaert's defense attorney admitted that her client has made moral transgressions but argued that he was not legally responsible for the 10,170 photos posted on the websites operated by Bollaert.