Cairns grocery store manager shared 100+ ‘intimate images’ hacked from Snapchat

Police discovered a former Woolworths manager was part of a secret network trading intimate images of Cairns women after seizing his phone during an unrelated investigation.

Joel Peter Maloney, 40, (right) pictured leaving Cairns Magistrates court with his defence lawyer Scott Osborne (left). Maloney pleaded guilty to two charges related to hacking a woman's snapchat and sharing 105 intimate images from her account online.

A Cairns supermarket manager hacked into a stranger’s Snapchat account and then shared more than 100 of her “intimate images” online, a court has been told.

The 24-year-old victim, also from Cairns but a stranger to the man, did not know her account had been infiltrated until the police told her 105 of her private images had been shared online publicly.

Joel Peter Maloney, a 40-year-old former Woolworths store manager from Whitfield, was caught after the police seized his phone during an unrelated investigation.

He pleaded guilty in Cairns Magistrates Court this week to two charges – obtaining or dealing with another’s identification to commit an indictable offence and using a restricted computer without consent to cause damage or commit an indictable offence in a prosecution described as “rare” because of the difficulty of detecting this type of offending.

Police prosecutor David Castor said police searching Maloney’s phone found a folder titled “Cairns” in cloud storage with about 60 subfolders with women’s names on them.

They also found Discord messages that showed Maloney was part of a “decentralised network” of people in Cairns who were trading in intimate images of people “known to reside in Cairns” and procuring people to “unlawfully access Snapchat accounts”.

When police searched Maloney’s phone as part of an unrelated investigation, they found messages and folders related to a “decentralised network” of people in Cairns who were trading in hacked images.

“This offending is difficult to detect ... (Maloney) used VPNs as well as proxy servers, which can mask his identity,” Mr Castor said.

“(Maloney) unlawfully used (the victim’s) email address and password to access her Snapchat, unlawfully downloaded the entirety, and manually reviewed it to identify intimate images of the victim ... he has maintained control of the images, ultimately trading them. He shared them via links to public websites.

“The victim does not know the offender and all of it has been without her consent and knowledge.”

Acting magistrate Raimund Heggie sentenced Maloney to three years’ probation and ordered him to pay the victim compensation of $9000.

He told Maloney he would go to prison for three months if he did not pay the money within three months.

“(The) images are now circulating out there on the internet ... and they can’t be retrieved and taken back,” Mr Heggie said

“It is a person in our local community and that person’s reputation is at stake here in terms of how those images are circulated.

“It shows a level of disrespect and certainly would be distressing to the victim.”

Defence solicitor Scott Osborne said Maloney had no criminal history before or after these offences, and was a self-described “techie nerd” who had gone down a rabbit hole during a dark period in his life.

Defence lawyer Scott Osborne (left) pictured here leaving court with Maloney (right) told the court his client became “obsessed with the challenge of finding information” and had not entered hacking forums with the” intention of causing detriment to anyone”.

“How does a man who has lived an impeccable life until now end up in this mess?” Mr Osborne said, explaining that Maloney had worked for more than 20 years for Woolworths, rising from a shelf stacker position to manager.

He had lost his job as a result of the offences, Mr Osborne said.

“He describes being in a very dark place mentally and had some serious issues ... He became ostracised from his normal activities – the cricket club and the football team – and he began using the internet as a form of escapism – he is a techie nerd,” Mr Osborne said.

“It is important to say he didn’t go into these forums to cause any detriment to anyone ... He rather evolved to these places. He became obsessed with the challenge of finding information.”

Mr Osborne said Maloney had suffered “extra-curial” punishment as a result of his “foolish offending”, losing his job and damaging his relationship.

Mr Heggie said he accepted the man was remorseful through his guilty plea, but the offences had some level of “sophistication, research and planning”.

He did not record the convictions against Maloney.

Originally published as Cairns grocery store manager shared 100+ ‘intimate images’ hacked from Snapchat