A San Diego man on trial for posting sexually explicit photos of women to a website to extort them for money left his victims distraught and desperate to have the photos removed at any cost, a deputy attorney general told jurors on Friday.
“The victims will tell you they were immediately harassed because of the links to their personal information,” Deputy Attorney General Tawnya Austin said. “Their cell phones were blowing up. You’ll see hundreds of emails where they begged for him to take their info down.”
Opening statements were heard in the case of 28-year-old Kevin Bollaert charged with 31 felony counts.
He contends he shouldn’t be held legally responsible for the explicit photos being submitted to his now-defunct site, Yougotposted.com, by ex-boyfriends and ex-husbands in a so-called "revenge porn" case.
In her opening statement, his defense attorney, Emily Rose-Weber, said she doesn’t dispute the facts of the case – that he posted more than 10,000 images of women and asked them to pay hundreds of dollars to have them removed.
What Rose-Weber does dispute, she said, is whether Bollaert should be held liable for them.
“Is it illegal to host a website where bad things happen?” Rose-Weber said. “Is it illegal to hold up a big blank canvas to anyone who wants to paint on it?”
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The deputy attorney general contends Bollaert did break the law.
The photographs came from scorned lovers, hacked emails, stolen phones or secretly snapped photos with the victims’ permission and included links to their social media accounts, Austin said.
They were then submitted to Bollaert’s website to be posted at a cost – to the victims. Austin said Bollaert created a second website, ChangeMyReputation.com, where he allegedly charged the women $300 to $350 have their pictures removed.
The women in the photos were immediately harassed and were forced to beg the defendant to remove them, Austin said. They were told they must submit another photo to Bollaert holding a sign with their date or birth.
“This is essentially 21st century blackmail,” Austin said.
Rose-Weber, however, painted a much different picture of the defendant. She described him as an aspiring web developer who wanted to start a business in the tech industry.
She said he noticed that he could make a lot of money in amateur porn. What the prosecution described as extortion, Rose-Weber contends were his terms of using the website.
“Sex sells. That’s an old cliché but it’s as true today as who first said it,” she said.
The so-called “revenge porn” case is the first of its kind, filed by state Attorney General Kamala Harris.
There is now a California law that prohibits posting identifiable nude photos online after a breakup, punishable with a $1,000 fine or six months in jail.
