Paris Hilton hacker gets 11 months in jail

A Massachusetts teenager who reportedly hacked into Paris Hilton’s cell phone account has been sentenced to 11 months in a juvenile facility. Celebrity phone numbers stored in Hilton’s cell phone were posted online when her account was hacked earlier this year.

A Washington Post report on Wednesday identified Hilton as a victim of the 17-year-old Massachusetts boy. The boy is a juvenile under federal law. Prosecutors would not name him or confirm Hilton as a victim, citing federal law that keeps such information under seal in juvenile cases.

The teenager was sentenced last week in U.S. District Court in Boston. He pleaded guilty before Judge Rya W. Zobel to nine counts of juvenile delinquency, prosecutors said.

The charges included hacking into Internet and telephone service providers, theft of personal information and posting it on the Web, and making bomb threats to high schools in Florida and Massachusetts, all over a 15-month period. While in custody and during two years of supervised release, the teenager is prohibited from possessing or using any computer, cell phone or other equipment capable of accessing the Internet.

Prosecutors said the teenager’s first crime was committed in March 2004, when he e-mailed a bomb threat to a Florida school. The school was closed for two days while officials investigated and ruled the threat a hoax. In January, the teenager hacked into T-Mobile’s computer system and looked up account information of its customers, including Hilton.

This spring, he arranged “with one or more associates” to make a bomb threat to a Massachusetts school, prosecutors said. They said an investigation of the teen’s associates is continuing.

Hilton, a hotel chain heiress whose sex tape with an ex-boyfriend became a cyberspace novelty, stars on Fox’s “The Simple Life.” The story was first reported on the Post’s Web site Tuesday. It said a washingtonpost.com reporter had a series of telephone and online communications between March and June with the teen, and that he admitted to the crimes for which he was sentenced. It did not publish his name.