McKayla Maroney Was Allegedly Underage in Hacked Photos

The celebrity nude photo scandal that has taken the internet by storm -- and resulted in investigations by both Apple and the FBI -- has taken a turn that somehow makes the leak even more illegal, if you can believe it.

Attorneys for Olympic gymnast McKayla Maroney, one of the victims of the photo leak, have revealed that the Olympian was under 18 years of age when the hacked nude photos of her were taken. In a stern letter to Porn.com, Maroney's attorneys demanded the immediate removal of the images from the website, on the grounds that Maroney was underage when they were taken. Moreover, another attorney for Maroney sent a letter to several other websites hosting the images, in which it's stated that Maroney, who only turned 18 last December, owns the copyright to the hacked photos. This, despite earlier claims by Maroney that the images were fake. Of course, it could be that elements of the photo were fake while other parts were real.

Naturally, the letters killed the collective interest in the photos for many websites. The pictures are gone from reddit, for one, complete with a message from administrators to users of the subreddit TheFappening, which has been circulating the hacked photos:

"The reddit.com site admins have let us know that McKayla Maroney was underage in the photos as well and that we need to remove them. If we don't remove them, then this subreddit will most likely be banned (very quickly)... Due to this, we will be removing any and all things that contain their images. It is considered CP (Child Pornography), and breaks reddit's site-wide rules (in addition to international law, age of consent is completely different than child pornography), and will get this subreddit banned if we were to allow them to be posted."

Similarly, Porn.com has decided they'd rather not land in a court over child pornography distribution charges, and have removed Maroney's pics completely from the website, a rep for the site confirms. So it looks like her attorneys are doing their best to scrub the internet clean of these images.

Unfortunately, it's a big internet out there.

Via: TMZ

Credit: AP/Julie Jacobson