OR- Clackamas teen faces charges in scheme to extort nude pictures

7-9-2009 Oregon:

A 16-year-old Clackamas boy is accused of taking over the MySpace and Facebook pages of two female college students and threatening not to relinquish control unless they sent him nude photographs of themselves.

An Oregon State Police trooper based at Oregon State University investigated the case. One of the victims attends OSU, the other Washington State University. After sending subpoenas to each of the social-networking sites and tracing e-mails sent by the suspect, the trooper obtained the youth's Internet Protocol address and, from that, his physical address.

It turned out that the suspect had grown up within blocks of the two women, both 18. Now the 16-year-old high school student faces computer crime and theft by extortion charges in Clackamas County Juvenile Court.

Once confronted by police, the teenager admitted hacking into the two women's social-networking pages.

"He kind of said it was a prank and didn't think it was that serious," Senior Trooper Randy Westbrook said. "I explained to him, hacking into someone's computer and trying to extort anything from someone is pretty serious."

The president of a Canada-based nonprofit called Bullying.org said hijacking someone's account and blackmailing that person has happened before but is not common. More common are direct threats from text messages, e-mails or the creation of a Web page to spread lies or rumors about victims, said Bill Belsey, a middle school teacher and president of Bullying.org.

The National Crime Prevention Council, along with Belsey's Web site, urges Internet users to change passwords regularly and not share personal account information.

The OSU student called police May 6 to report receiving five e-mails over a two-day period from someone who claimed to have taken over her MySpace and Facebook pages.

"The suspect locked her out of both of them," Westbrook said.

The e-mails said the only way she could regain control of her social-networking pages would be to send nude photographs of herself.

When she didn't respond, another e-mail arrived, requesting photographs of her bare feet, specifying photos of the top, bottom and sides, and provided a live.com e-mail address to send them to.

Westbrook said the blackmailer apparently was able to change the woman's e-mail address so she couldn't log in to her MySpace or Facebook page.

Westbrook then learned that a friend of the victim, an 18-year-old woman enrolled at WSU, had received similar e-mails and couldn't connect to her MySpace and Facebook pages either.

"They were upset. They didn't know if they had some stalker or somebody watching them," Westbrook said. "It probably added a lot of stress for them during school."

Westbrook sent subpoenas to Facebook and MySpace and traced the e-mails.

Two to three weeks later, he found out the Internet Protocol address belonged to Comcast. He sent subpoenas to Comcast and linked the IP address to the home of the 16-year-old Clackamas boy. The boy was a friend at one time with the brother of the OSU victim, state police learned.

Westbrook said the teenager said he had guessed the victims' passwords.

The women were relieved to find out who was responsible, police said.

Westbrook suggested the 16-year-old also apologize to the victims, because he might encounter them or their parents in the neighborhood.

A Facebook safety page (facebook.com/safety) urges users to report any suspicious people or inappropriate content they might encounter to their parents or a responsible adult.

Belsey said the 16-year-old probably thought he could get away with what he did.

"People who do this try and hide behind what they perceive as the anonymity that the wired world can bring them," Belsey said. "You may think you're anonymous online, but you're not. There are real life consequences for yourself and other people in these virtual worlds." ..Source.. by Maxine Bernstein, The Oregonian