'Bachelor' Contestant in Tears as She Claims Hacker Is Blackmailing Her Over Topless Photos

A former "Bachelor" and "Bachelor in Paradise" contestant came forward on Tuesday via her Instagram Stories to detail allegations of a hacker blackmailing her over nude photos.

A few hours after sharing her story, Amanda Stanton was back on IG with an update. "The hacker has left me alone since I posted that," she said of the initial story, though she wasn't confident he'd remain silent. "For all you guys telling me to contact the police, I have already done that. I can't say too much about what's going on because he's probably watching this."

Stanton was clearly in better spirits Tuesday evening after having unloaded the full story earlier that afternoon. "I feel 100 times better now that I've addressed it," she told her followers.

According to the reality star, it all started three weeks ago when she received a series of emails from a man she didn't know who told her he'd hacked into her doctor's database and stolen the pre-op medical photos from her breast augmentation procedure.

She claims the man threatened to send the pics to people she follows on Instagram if she didn't pay him. "It's not a big deal," she said with tears in her eyes Tuesday afternoon, "I mean it's a little crazy."

But it is a big deal if she's dealing with a hacker who's violated her privacy and is spreading topless pictures of her without her permission.

"He had some nude photos of me in the doctor's office, which is just stupid because they're medical photos," Stanton said. "But he was basically asking for a lot of money and threatening to send the photos to everybody who I follow." She said the man told her unfollowing people wouldn't even help as he had the list.

Her decision to come forward, Stanton says, is an effort to get the man to stop distributing the images. "He sent them to my friend's boyfriend, he sent them to people who I work with, he sent them to producers at ABC. And it was just kind of out of my control and there was nothing I could do about it, so I figured that I might as well just address it," she explained.

"I just don't want to give someone like that power over me," she said tearfully. "I hope that maybe just by addressing it that he'll stop."

The reality star and author says she's received messages from multiple people through social media saying that they've received the photos. "Of course it's something that I didn't want out there, but it's not the end of the world if people see my boobs," she said. "But I think I'm just so frustrated and I just feel very violated."

She went on to add, "I've also been harassed every single day. I don't know what other information this person has. It's just been kind of exhausting." Stanton is now working with the police in some capacity and admitted in her later videos that she's not sure how the hacker might respond to this latest development. She promised to keep her followers updated.

On Tuesday morning, Stanton first hinted that something was amiss in her life in a picture post to her Instagram page. At the time, she said she wasn't going to go into detail, but added, "My anxiety is out of control and I've been extremely stressed over some things that are completely out of my control."

She told her followers she intended to "be more real with you guys, even if it's a little scary." Within hours of that post, she was totally real, breaking down the details of the alleged blackmail and by the end of the night, she was clearly in a better head space about the whole thing, had the authorities involved and hopefully moving toward regaining control of her situation.

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