A Millstone man has been sentenced to five years in prison for hacking into the private cloud-based accounts of two women and stealing sexually explicit videos and photos of them that he then posted on publicly accessible sites.

Patrick Farrell, 37, pleaded guilty to charges of second-degree computer theft and was sentenced this week. An investigation revealed that between October of 2015 and April of 2016, he hacked into the cloud-based storage accounts of two women and, in each case, stole a sexually explicit video of the victim as well as one or more nude photos of the victim. In one case, he posted the stolen video on a video-sharing website and posted four nude photos of the victim on another multimedia sharing website. In the other case, he posted the sexually explicit video and a nude photo on the victim’s own social media account. The victims did not know Farrell and did not consent to him accessing their accounts.

At the sentencing, prosecutors said Farrell admitted to investigators that he breached more than one thousand private email accounts during a four-year period, stealing private photos and other personal information.

“The crimes that Farrell committed were especially cruel and harmful to his victims,” said Veronica Allende of the New Jersey Division of Criminal Justice. “We will continue to deploy the expertise and technology needed to bring offenders like Farrell to justice. Meanwhile, we urge people to be vigilant on the internet and social media, and to carefully secure their online accounts, because there are many types of cyber-criminals, ranging from sexual predators to tech-savvy thieves.”