Tyler Schrier and Keith James Hudson were given jail time for hacking into a professional poker player's email account and trying to blackmail him with naked pictures they found there.
The two men from California were participants in what is being called a "sextortion" scam that targeted poker savant Joe Sebok.
The scheme began fall 2010, when the 23 year-old Schrier and Hudson, 39 threatened to publicly post the nude photos, in addition to some emails of a sensitive nature, if he and a handful of other victims did not pay up.
Their demanded price? A few hundred thousand dollars.
Sebok claimed during a sentence hearing at the U.S. District Court in downtown Los Angeles that his life has been "altered and shattered in irreparable ways," due to his compromised reputation in the professional poker world, according to Reuters.
"I was no longer able to maintain my then-current level of participation in the poker industry, representing the brands that I had been previously, as well as greatly destroying my ability to do so with new companies moving forward," Sebok said, according to attorney spokesperson Thom Mrozek.
"Without belaboring the point too much, it was a nightmare, and one that I was forced to live through with millions of people watching," Sebok finished, by way of his attorney.
There were a few other victims in this scheme, but they were only identified in court documents by their initials.
Schier was given 42 months in prison after pleading guilty to conspiracy, extortion and unauthorized access to a protected computer. He could have had to spend up to 17 years in prison.
Hudson made off with two years incarceration, after he plead guilty to unauthorized access to a protected computer for financial gain. He faced five years behind bars for his participation in the scheme.
This article is copyrighted by Travelers Today, the travel news leader
