This “Fly on the Wall” has landed in a hornet’s nest of trouble that could see him do major prison time.
The Tennessee man who once boasted about hacking into Miley Cyrus’ Gmail account and posting some racy pictures of the teen sensation finally got his comeuppance on Monday, pleading guilty to charges of credit card fraud and hacking in an unrelated case.
So how’d the feds finally nail him? And why wasn’t he charged over the Miley mess?
After a lengthy investigation by the FBI, 21-year-old Josh Holly appeared in U.S. District Court in Nashville and copped to swiping 200 credit card numbers and breaking into the MySpace pages of a number of celebrities in a spamming scheme for selling cell phone ring tones that netted him upwards of $100,000 in commissions, per Wired’s Threat Level blog,
What put authorities on his trail was some stupidity on his part. Using a pseudonym, Holly bragged to Wired that he had hacked Cyrus’ email. The FBI subsequently tracked him down and raided his Murfreesboro, Tenn., home in 2007 at which point they came across the treasure trove of pilfered plastic and arrested him.
Holly has never been charged in connection with the Cyrus hack. The FBI has declined to comment on the investigation or whether he could yet face charges for posting a cache of stolen pics featuring a scantily clad Miiley, then all of 15.
According to The Tennessean, during yesterday’s proceeding, the defendant told the court that he was addicted to the Internet. He was subsequently warned by the judge to stay away from the Web after he may have violated a condition of his release.
Holly faces a maximum of 13 years in prison and a $500,000 fine. Sentencing is set for Oct. 31.
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