CHICAGO » Oscar-winning actress Jennifer Lawrence broke down at a meeting with federal agents in September 2014 about nude photos of her that had been splashed on the internet as part of a shocking computer hack known as “Celebgate.”

“She became very distraught and I had to stop the interview at one point because of her emotional reaction to the information being discussed,” an FBI agent wrote in a court filing about the meeting with Lawrence in Los Angeles. “(She) stated she was having an anxiety attack, and was visibly shaken.”

Now, two years after Celebgate rocked Hollywood, a Southwest Side Chicago man is scheduled to appear in a federal courtroom in Chicago next week to formally plead guilty to his role in the scandal, court records show.

Edward Majerczyk, 28, a self-described computer nerd and son of a retired Chicago police officer, was charged in federal court in Los Angeles last month with one count of unauthorized access to a protected computer to obtain information, records show.

Majerczyk has already signed a 20-page plea agreement calling for his case to be transferred to Chicago, where prosecutors have agreed to seek a nine-month prison sentence, court records show. An arraignment was set for Sept. 8 when Majerczyk’s plea is expected to be formally entered before U.S. Magistrate Judge Daniel Weisman.

Majerczyk was accused of using a phishing scheme to illegally gain access to more than 300 Apple iCloud and Gmail accounts from November 2013 to August 2014, including at least 30 belonging to celebrities in the Los Angeles area.

According to a draft of his plea agreement, Majerczyk’s scheme worked this way: First, he sent emails to victims that appeared to be from security accounts of internet service providers seeking the victims’ user names and passwords. For those who provided that private information, he then illegally accessed their email accounts and obtained “personal information including sensitive and private photographs and videos,” authorities said.

Majerczyk was not accused of selling the material or posting any of it online himself. The investigation into who leaked the sensitive information is still ongoing, Thom Mrozek, a spokesman with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles, told the Tribune this week.

In all, as many as 100 celebrities were targeted as part of Celebgate, including Lawrence, Kirsten Dunst and Kate Upton and her boyfriend, Detroit Tigers pitcher Justin Verlander. Many had embarrassing and intimate photos posted on web sites such as Reddit.com and 4chan.org.

In an interview with Vanity Fair in 2014, Lawrence called the breach of her privacy a “sex crime.”

“I was just so afraid. I didn’t know how this would affect my career,” Lawrence told the magazine. “Just because I’m a public figure, just because I’m an actress, does not mean that I asked for this. It does not mean that it comes with the territory.”

Majercyzk has no criminal history and was given credit by prosecutors for accepting responsibility for his crime, according to his plea agreement. His mother retired from her job as a Chicago police officer in 2012 after 30 years on the force, according to a City Council resolution saluting her career.

Previously, Majerczyk had lived in Orland Park and attended Moraine Valley Community College part time, records show. In social media posts, he has described himself as an avid “indoorsman” and “functionally nerdy.”

Majerczyk’s attorney, Thomas Needham, did not return numerous calls seeking comment.

According to an FBI search warrant affidavit filed in Chicago, Lawrence discovered on Aug. 31, 2014, that numerous photos that she’d taken with her iPhone — including several nude images — had been posted on the internet. In an interview the next day, Lawrence told agents she had shot the images over a two- to four-year period and sent them only to her then-boyfriend. She said she “recalls deleting the photos after they were sent,” the affidavit said.

Lawrence said that three weeks before the photos surfaced she’d noticed her Apple iTunes password was not working and that other internet services were “acting up,” according to the affidavit. A short time later, she received a message on her phone purporting to be from Apple security notifying her that her account had been logged into from Russia and she needed to confirm it was her or change her password immediately. She forwarded the email to her assistant.

The day after interviewing Lawrence about the hack, agents talked to Verlander, who said he had taken many of the nude photos of Upton and never shared them with anyone before they were leaked online. Prior to the leak, Verlander had also received a security message that was nearly identical to the one received by Lawrence, according to the affidavit.

Federal authorities were able to trace the IP addresses of several computers used in the Celebgate hack to a nondescript apartment building in Chicago in the 6400 block of South Narragansett Avenue, where Majerczyk lived with his mother, according to court records

The affidavit stated that Majerczyk had either accessed or attempted to hack 22 email accounts from his computer, including several “high-profile actresses in the entertainment industry.” Computer records also showed that an Apple iPad registered to Majerczyk’s address was used to set up one of the phishing accounts later emailed to some of the celebrities, according to the affidavit.

Records show agents raided Majerczyk’s apartment just a few blocks from Midway Airport on Oct. 15, 2014, seizing several desktop and laptop computers, a MacBook and numerous thumb drives and external hard drives. Another Celebgate-related search warrant was executed the same day at a home in the 4600 block of South Washtenaw Avenue, but no charges related to that raid appear to have been filed.

In May, Ryan Collins, 36, of Lancaster, Pa., pleaded guilty to a similar phishing scheme to hack celebrity accounts that were later linked to Celebgate, but authorities believe he was working independently of Majerczyk. Collins is awaiting sentencing, court records show.

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