Woman Cops To Hacking Ex-Playboy Playmate’s E-Mail, Swiping Racy Photos Of Baseball Star

A Minnesota woman today pleaded guilty to hacking into the e-mail account of a former Playboy Playmate and swiping racy photos of baseball star Grady Sizemore, images that later were widely distributed online.

Leah Ayers, 20, copped this morning to a misdemeanor count of unauthorized computer access during a District Court hearing in Dakota County. Ayers, pictured in the mug shot at right, was placed on probation for two years and ordered to serve six days on a county work crew. She will also have to pay court costs and a fine totaling $1000.

Ayers was named last year in a complaint charging her with illegally accessing ex-Playmate Brittany Binger’s Yahoo e-mail account several times in August 2009. The account contained photos of Sizemore, Binger’s boyfriend, who was then an outfielder with the Cleveland Indians.

Some of the 15 pilfered photos of Sizemore, 29, showed him posing shirtless in front of a mirror, iPhone in hand. The athlete apparently e-mailed the private photos to Binger, 24, who was Playboy’s Playmate of the Month in June 2007.

Ayers got access to Binger’s e-mail by changing the account’s password, which she did by correctly answering Yahoo security questions, including one about the city in which Binger’s father was born. Court records do not indicate why Ayers undertook the illegal incursion--or whether her target was Binger or Sizemore, now a baseball free agent.

If Ayers successfully completes her probation term by its November 2013 discharge date, the misdemeanor count against her will be formally dismissed. At the time of her arrest, Ayers, a 2009 graduate of Apple Valley High School, was enrolled at St. Cloud State University in Minnesota.