The man who stole celebrity nude photos has been jailed for 18 months.

Jennifer Lawrence

Jennifer Lawrence

Ryan Collins from Pennsylvania was sentenced to a year and a half in prison after illegally accessing pictures belonging to the likes of Jennifer Lawrence and Kate Upton in a number of incidents that took place from November 2012 to September 2014.

In a statement, Pennsylvania US attorney Bruce Brandler said: "In some instances, Collins would use a software program to download the entire contents of the victims' Apple iCloud backups.

"In addition, Collins ran a modeling scam in which he tricked his victims into sending him nude photographs. He was taken into custody immediately after sentencing."

Some of the content appeared online but prosecutors did not have any evidence that suggested that Collins was responsible for sharing the images, which belonged to 50 Apple iCloud users and 72 Gmail users, across the web.

At the time of the incident, Jennifer - whose nude photos ended up on the image-based message board 4Chan - called it a "sex crime".

She said: "It is not a scandal. It is a sex crime. It is a sexual violation. It's disgusting. The law needs to be changed, and we need to change. That's why these Websites are responsible.

"Just the fact that somebody can be sexually exploited and violated, and the first thought that crosses somebody's mind is to make a profit from it. It's so beyond me. I just can't imagine being that detached from humanity. I can't imagine being that thoughtless and careless and so empty inside."