A man involved in the infamous “celebgate/fappening” hacking scandal in 2014 that resulted in private images of celebrities appearing online has been sentenced to 18 months in prison.

Ryan Collins, 36, from Pennsylvania had earlier pleaded guilty to one count of unauthorized access to a protected computer to obtain information. Collins stood accused of obtaining access to more than 100 Gmail and iCloud accounts between November 2012 until the beginning of September 2014. He was charged with using a phishing scheme that involved his pretending to be from Google and Apple respectively, then asking celebrities to provide their usernames and passwords. Once those details had been obtained, Collins accessed accounts and stole numerous photographs from his victims.

“He sent e-mails to victims that appeared to be from Apple or Google and asked victims to provide their usernames and passwords,” the Justice Department said in a statement. “After illegally accessing the e-mail accounts, Collins obtained personal information including nude photographs and videos. In some instances, Collins would use a software program to download the entire contents of the victims’ Apple iCloud backups.”

In addition to targeting celebrities, Collins is also said to have run a modeling scam in which he tricked victims into sending him nude photographs of themselves. Another man, Edward Majerczyk, 28, of Chicago, also pleaded guilty in July in relation to the hacking, which included celebrities Jennifer Lawrence, Kate Upton, Rihanna and Avril Lavigne.

Who did it?

Collins, along with Majercztk and another man, Andrew Hilton, who also pleaded guilty in relation to celebrity hacking, takes the number of guilty pleas to three now for the Department of Justice. But one question remains outstanding: who uploaded the celebrity pictures to the internet.

In Collin’s case, Justice Department officials noted that they found that they “have not uncovered any evidence linking Collins to the actual leaks or that Collins shared or uploaded the information he obtained,” essentially the same line they used with Majercztk and Hilton.

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