Jail for Hong Kong techie who exposed stars' sex snaps

Eight months hard time

The Hong Kong techie who exposed over 1,000 compromising pics of film star Edison Chen and a parade of starlets has been sentenced to eight and a half months in jail.

Sze Ho-chun, 24, swiped the snaps when Chen dropped his laptop in for repairs back in 2006. The pics showed Chen cavorting with a string of women including actress Cecilia Cheung and pop singer Gillian Chung.

Ho-chun managed to keep the stash to himself, for a while at least, but according to prosecutors "some time after those dates, he showed some of the images to two female customers before giving a CD with all 1,300 images on to one of them".

The snaps surfaced on the internet in February 2008, causing a major scandal in China and a barrage of Google image searches. Chen confirmed they were all the real deal, apologised, beat a retreat to his native Canada and declared he'd be putting his career on hold, before making appearances in The Dark Knight and The Sniper.

Sze's career options look somewhat more limited after he was found guilty on three charges of gaining access to a computer with a view to dishonest gain for himself or others. Yesterday, the judge hit with him with eight and a half months in jail. Sze's lawyers said he would probably appeal the sentence. ®