A San Diego court convicted on Monday Kevin Bollaert on 27 counts of theft and extortion in connection with two revenge porn sites he runs.

He is one of the first to be convicted under a new California law that makes revenge porn a criminal offense, reports AP.

Bollaert operated a website that served as venue for people with axes to grind against their former lovers by publishing shameful images as well as personal data such as names and hometowns of people sans their approval.

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He also ran a second website which Bollaert, 28, used to contact the victims, whose images were published in the first website. He asks payments of up to $350 to remove the embarrassing photos, in the process, earning him thousands of dollars.

Emily Rose-Weber, lawyer of Bollaert, argued that what Bollaert did could be immoral but not against the law. The court rejected Rose-Weber's defense even if the law's target is those who post the humiliating photos and not those who run websites that publish the images.

More than the humiliation, some of the victims suffered more consequences. One of the over two dozen people who filed charges against Bollaert told that court that as a result of the publication in Bollaert's website of her naked photos, she was kicked out of her home because her family thought she brought shame on them and had ruined their family name.

Bollaert, whose portal has more than 10,000 photos considered sexually explicit, could face up to 20 years jail term, reports Skynews.

In November, a California court sentenced a man who posted on Facebook the topless photo of his former girlfriend was meted a one-year prison term for breaching the state's revenge porn law.

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