LOS ANGELES – A man’s unusually complicated hunt for nudity on the Internet may land him in prison for more than 100 years after federal prosecutors say he hacked into hundreds of social media and email accounts to coerce more than 350 women into showing him their naked bodies.
Karen “Gary” Kazaryan of Glendale, California, was arrested Tuesday after the 27-year-old was named in an indictment Friday alleging 15 counts of computer intrusion and 15 counts of aggravated identity theft, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Tracy L. Wilkison.
Prosecutors accuse Kazaryan of hacking into the women’s accounts and searching Facebook messages, emails and other files for nude or seminude pictures of them. He then posed as a friend, persuading them to strip while he watched via Skype, captured images of them, or both.
When the women discovered that Kazaryan was posing as a friend, he often blackmailed them with the nude photos he had fraudulently obtained to coerce more stripping, prosecutors said. In some cases, he stands accused of posting the nude photos to the victims’ Facebook pages. About 3,000 pictures of nude and seminude women were found on Kazaryan’s computer, authorities said. He faces up to 105 years in prison if convicted on all counts.