A Dutch politician could face several years behind bars after being accused by prosecutors of hacking the iCloud accounts of hundreds of women and posting explicit photos and videos online.
Named only on the official Netherlands Public Prosecution Service website as “a 35-year-old man from Almere,” he is identified elsewhere as Mitchel van der K who sat on the local council there for the VVD party.
According to the charges, he targeted both women known personally to him and celebrities such as YouTuber Laura Ponticorvo and former Dutch hockey star Fatima Moreira de Melo.
As well as hacking their iCloud, email and chat accounts, he’s accused of leaking online images and a video of one of his victims, Ponticorvo. It was that decision which is said to have sparked the investigation leading to his arrest.
On one occasion, Van der K is accused of posing as someone else in order to trick a victim into sending him pictures of herself.
Van der K has admitted hacking the women but said in his defense that online extortionists forced him to commit these crimes or risk footage of himself being exposed online.
“The cases that the police have investigated in detail show that more than half of the accounts hacked by the suspect were women who had no (national) fame, but who did interact with him in his work or private environment,” argued the public prosecutor. “Why an unknown extortioner would have forced the suspect to browse their accounts for photos and videos, I completely miss.”
The incidents took place over a three-year period, from 2014 to 2017, covering the infamous Fappening leaks which exposed intimate images and videos of numerous celebrities.
Prosecutors are asking for a three-year jail sentence, with the court expected to hand down its verdict on December 24.