Tattle: Hacker admits snooping celebs' emails

CHRISTOPHER CHANEY, an unemployed Florida man, faces up to 60 years in prison after pleading guilty on Monday to hacking into the email accounts of such celebrities as Christina Aguilera, Mila Kunis and Scarlett Johansson, whose nude photos eventually landed on the Internet.

It shows you how tough the job market is when you have the technical knowledge to hack into cellphones and still can't get a job.

Chaney, 35, of Jacksonville, pleaded in federal court to nine counts, including unauthorized access to a computer and wiretapping. He was immediately taken into custody, with his head down and his hands in his pocket.

We're guessing the nude-photo downloader has his hands in his pocket a lot. Sentencing is set for July 23.

Chaney was arrested in October as part of a yearlong investigation of celebrity hacking that authorities dubbed "Operation Hackerazzi."

Prosecutors said Chaney illegally accessed the email accounts of more than 50 people in the entertainment industry between November 2010 and October 2011. Chaney mined through publicly available data to figure out password and security questions for celebrity accounts. Once he had control of their email accounts, he also went through their contact lists to find email accounts of fellow stars.

He also hijacked a forwarding feature so a copy of every email a celebrity received was sent to an account he controlled, according to court documents.

In one instance, Chaney posed as stylist Simone Harouche and sent an email from her account to Aguilera - one of Harouche's clients - asking Xtina for scantily clad photographs, prosecutors said. Some of those photos appeared online.

And this guy was unemployed? Shouldn't he have been working for the CIA or FBI?

The kicker? Chaney forwarded many of the photos to two gossip websites and to another hacker, but there wasn't any evidence that he had profited from his scheme, authorities said. He has since apologized. As part of the plea agreement, Chaney could pay a fine of up to $2.2 million. He must pay restitution to his victims, ranging from $15,000 to $400,000.

And he's going to get that money, how?

* A New York City auction will feature a painting by art deco artist Tamara de Lempicka that vanished from public view after it was created in 1925.

Sotheby's says "Reclining Nude 1" is expected to sell for $3 million to $5 million on May 2.

The work was included in the artist's first major solo exhibition in Milan in 1925.

A little-known fact is that Tamara painted the image after hacking into Reclining Nude 1's cellphone.

*

Jimmy Kimmel

has been

selected to host the 64th Primetime Emmy Awards, which will air Sept. 23 on ABC.

Seeking a better audience, he's

also set to host the White House Correspondents Dinner in April.

* Leanne Zaloumis, 29, accused

of breaking into Simon Cowell's house wielding a broken brick, appeared in a London court Monday.

She was charged with aggravated burglary after the incident Saturday night.

Prosecutors said Cowell was watching TV in the bedroom of his London mansion when he heard a loud bang coming from his bathroom and discovered Zaloumis.

Cowell's security staff confined her to a bedroom until police arrived and found her in the closet.

* Universal Pictures and Focus Features have acquired the rights to E.L. James' bestselling erotic novel, Fifty Shades of Gray.

And Sasha Grey's comeback porn film?

"Fifty Shades of Grey."

- Daily News TV critic Ellen Gray and wire services contributed

to this report.