Revenge porn website operator has his sentence reduced by judge
A San Diego judge on Monday split the 18-year jail sentence of a man convicted in February for running a revenge porn website, cutting the maximum time behind bars to eight years but tacking on a decade-long probation period, the San Diego Union Tribune reports.
Superior Court Judge David Gill said the decision was difficult, but he agreed with defense arguments that because the sentence came under California’s realignment law, which keeps nonviolent offenders in local jails rather than state prisons, there were few opportunities in a local jail for education or genuine rehabilitation for 29-year-old Kevin Bollaert.
Bollaert now has to serve at least four years behind bars, rather than at least nine under his original sentence. He ran the website UGotPosted.com, where users could upload nude photos of others and give their names, addresses and places of employment. If victims complained, they were directed to Bollaert’s other website, ChangeMyReputation.com, where they could pay to have the images taken down.
At his trial, 21 victims testified against Bollaert, whose website users uploaded 10,170 private and explicit photos anonymously between December 2012 and September 2013, KSWB reports.
When Bollaert was convicted in February on 27 charges, including identity theft and extortion, California Attorney General Kamala Harris said it was the nation’s first prosecution of a cyberexploitation website operator, KSWB reports.
Bollaert’s original jail sentence was the longest in San Diego County since the realignment took effect in 2011. The law was enacted to relieve the overburdened state prisons, putting more responsibility on localities by keeping those not convicted of sex crimes or violent crimes in local jails, the ABA Journal noted in a feature on prisons.
Bollaert’s lawyer, Deputy Public Defender Emily Rose-Weber, told the judge her client had little more to do in jail than read, watch TV or walk around the day room.
“How can we break up his day so that he’s doing something other than walking around in circles?” Rose-Weber said.
Deputy Attorney General Tawnya Boulan Austin argued that Bollaert is just the first of many white-collar criminals who will be put behind bars for a decade or more under realignment and that defendants should not be sentenced differently by county, depending on the jail facilities. “Whether or not he is on a concrete floor, or has this much time here or that much time there, there are other ways to address that. The victims don’t care about that.”
See also:
ABA Journal: “Victims are taking on ‘revenge porn’ websites for posting photos they didn’t consent to”
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