What are penalties for email hacking in the USA?

A very good friend of mine recently was the victim of email hacking. The hacker hacked 2 of my friends email accounts(1 AOL, and 1 Yahoo).





On the AOL account, he sent out a email to everyone on my friends buddy list saying my friend was gay, and a photo of a naked guy was in the email too.





On the Yahoo account, the hacker has hacked it numerous times and deleted the Flickr account associated with that Yahoo account, but nothing else was done





My friend who was hacked think it is a friend of ours who did it. My friend says he has proof that our friend did it since he has copies of the IP address used, but thats for the Yahoo account only. We dont have any proof yet that he hacked the AOL account. We are attempting to get that proof now.





What kind of penalties is he looking at if charged with hacking both accounts and sending the email? What about if he's just charged with hacking the Yahoo account? How much jail time? Amount of fines? Can anything else happen to him?

What are penalties for email hacking in the USA?
The federal punishment for hacking into computers ranges from a fine or imprisonment for no more than one year to a fine and imprisonment for no more than twenty years. This wide range of punishment depends upon the seriousness of the criminal activity and what damage the hacker has done.
Reply:life in prison...