A 21-year-old who once bragged of hacking into Miley Cyrus’ email and MySpace accounts told a federal judge Monday that he is addicted to the Internet and pleaded guilty to charges of credit card fraud and hacking.
Josh Holly was not charged for hacking Cyrus’ accounts and publishing racy photos he found in them, but federal agents found evidence of other crimes when they interviewed Holly and searched his computer in 2008. Holly appeared in U.S. District Court on Monday and pleaded guilty to access device fraud for possessing about 200 credit card numbers that didn’t belong to him.
He also pleaded guilty to commercial electronic mail message fraud for hacking MySpace so that visitors to certain celebrities’ profiles would receive spam messages. Holly was paid more than $100,000 in commissions for steering traffic to a website selling cellphone ring tones, according to court testimony.
Also Monday, Holly answered for violating a condition that he stay away from the Internet while the federal case is pending. Using his cellphone, Holly sent a status update to Facebook that said he was feeling “strong urges” to start hacking again. Judge Aleta A. Trauger told Holly to stay way from the Internet altogether and said she believes he has an addiction.