SACRAMENTO, Calif. — A California man who trolled women’s Facebook pages searching for clues that allowed him to take over their email accounts was sentenced Friday to more than four years in state prison after a judge rejected a plea for a lighter sentence and likened the man to a peeping Tom.

Once he took over women’s email accounts, George Bronk searched their folders for nude or semi-nude photographs or videos sent to their husbands or boyfriends and distributed the images to their contact list, prosecutors said.

“This case serves as a stark example of what occurs in so-called cyberspace. It has very real consequences,” Sacramento County Superior Court Judge Lawrence Brown said.

Bronk, 24, pleaded guilty in January to charges that included computer intrusion, false impersonation and possession of child pornography.

Bronk looked for email accounts on Facebook pages then gleaned personal information from postings to answer basic security questions, such as the name of an elementary school or favorite color.

Danielle Piscak, 22, of Parkland, Wash., told the Associated Press she was able to contact the person who had hacked into her email account and ask why he was doing it. She said Bronk’s reply was, “Because it’s funny.”