Miss Wolf hacker threatened to go public with images he had taken from her webcam unless she sent him more naked pictures, videos or logged in to Skype for five minutes and gave him a 'special performance'
A 19-year-old man was charged Thursday with hacking webcams at the home of Miss Teen USA Cassidy Wolf and other women to extort nude photos and videos from them, with authorities contending he forced several women to strip.
Jared James Abrahams of Temecula surrendered to agents at the FBI office in Orange County to face a charge of extortion that could send him to federal prison for up to two years, FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller said. He was later freed on $50,000 bail but a judge confined him to his family home, ordered him to wear a GPS monitor, and said he could only use the home computer for schoolwork, with software to be installed that will monitor its use.
Authorities said Abrahams knew Wolf, a 19-year-old graduate of Great Oak High School in Temecula who won the Miss Teen USA crown Aug. 9. She is identified only by her initials in the criminal complaint. Last month, Wolf told the website of NBC's "Today" show that earlier this year she received an anonymous email in which the sender claimed to have stolen images from the camera on her home computer.
The sender of the email threatened to go public with images captured from Wolf's webcam unless she would provide nude pictures of herself, Eimiller said - a crime commonly known as 'sextortion.' Instead, Wolf went to authorities, and an investigation was launched in March.
A federal complaint filed on Sept. 17 and unsealed Thursday charges Jared James Abrahams with extortion but Eimiller said other charges are possible.
An FBI agent's affidavit, included in the complaint, contends that Abrahams used malicious software to remotely operate webcams to capture nude photos and videos of at least seven women as they changed clothes - some of whom he knew personally and others he found by hacking Facebook pages.
The agent alleged that Abrahams, when interviewed, acknowledged controlling 30 to 40 hacked computers and extorting some women.
Abrahams, a college freshman majoring in computer science, allegedly would use the women's webcams to capture nude images, then send emails threatening to post them on their hacked social media accounts unless they either sent him nude photos, a nude video, or logged onto the Skype video chat service and follow his orders for five minutes.
He allegedly threatened Wolf that unless she heeded his demands, he would release her nude photos 'all over the Internet' and 'your dream of being a model will be transformed into a pornstar.'
According to the affidavit, the victims included several women from other countries
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