11-11-2011 Indiana:
A 38-year-old South Bend man was indicted this week by a federal grand jury in a "sextortion" case that began in Ohio.
____ faces two counts of enticement for the production of child pornography, one count of extortion using interstate communication and one count of accessing child pornography with the intent to view.
Federal prosecutors allege that ___, posing as a 17-year-old boy on the Internet, asked a minor girl in Galion, Ohio, to send him nude pictures of herself. The girl complied, and then he allegedly asked for more via text message, threatening to publish the photos she already sent if she did not respond, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
When Ohio authorities traced the cell phone number to ____, they contacted the St. Joseph County Police Department. Police executed a search warrant at his home and later found numerous images that constituted child pornography on the computer involving minor females, according to federal prosecutors. They also said they found a number of other potential minor and adult victims of ___.
___ was taken into custody last week. ..Source.. by Staff Report
November 11, 2011
Federal charges in South Bend 'sextortion' case
August 15, 2010
Feds: Online 'Sextortion' of Teens on the Rise
8-15-2010 National:
Feds, experts: Racy photos on cell phones, computers leads to rise in teen 'sextortion'
The nightmare began with a party: three teenage girls with a webcam, visiting an Internet chatroom and yielding to requests to flash their breasts. A week later, one of the girls, a 17-year-old from Indiana, started getting threatening e-mails.
A stranger said he had captured her image on the webcam and would post the pictures to her MySpace friends unless she posed for more explicit pictures and videos for him. On at least two occasions, the teen did what her blackmailer demanded. Finally, police and federal authorities became involved and indicted a 19-year-old Maryland man in June on charges of sexual exploitation.
Federal prosecutors and child safety advocates say they're seeing an upswing in such cases of online sexual extortion. They say teens who text nude cell phone photos of themselves or show off their bodies on the Internet are being contacted by pornographers who threaten to expose their behavior to friends and family unless they pose for more explicit porn, creating a vicious cycle of exploitation.
One federal affidavit includes a special term for the crime: "sextortion."
No one currently tracks the numbers of cases involving online sexual extortion in state and federal courts, but prosecutors and others point toward several recent high-profile examples victimizing teens in a dozen states:
— In Alabama, Jonathan Vance, 24, of Auburn was sentenced to 18 years in prison in April after he admitted sending threatening e-mails on Facebook and MySpace extorting nude photos from more than 50 young women in Alabama, Pennsylvania and Missouri.
— In Wisconsin, Anthony Stancl, 18, received 15 years in prison in February after prosecutors said he posed as a girl on Facebook to trick male high school classmates into sending him nude cell phone photos, which he then used to extort them for sex.
— A 31-year-old California man was arrested in June on extortion charges after authorities said he hacked into more than 200 computers and threatened to expose nude photos he found unless their owners posed for more sexually explicit videos. Forty-four of the victims were juveniles, authorities said. Federal prosecutors said he was even able to remotely activate some victims' webcams without their knowledge and record them undressing or having sex.
The cases have prompted law enforcement officials and advocates to caution teens about their activities. Privacy is nonexistent on the Internet, and once indiscretions appear online, they are virtually impossible to take back. A nude photo sent to a boyfriend's cell phone can easily be circulated through cell phone contacts and wind up on websites that post sexting photos. Once there, it's available for anyone who wants to trace it back to the person who made it.
"Kids are putting their head in the lion's mouth every time they do this," said Parry Aftab, an attorney and online child safety advocate.
Teens can be more vulnerable to blackmail because they're easy to intimidate and embarrassed to seek help. And the extortionists are often willing to make good on their threats, said Steve DeBrota, an assistant U.S. attorney in Indianapolis who has been involved in sextortion investigations.
"You are blackmailable," said Aftab, " ... and you will do anything to keep those pictures from getting out."
In the Indiana case, the teenage girl's mother called police when she found out about the threats. Authorities subpoenaed Internet service providers to track the chats and e-mails to their source, a computer in Mechanicsville, Md., according to court documents.
According to court documents, the computer's owner, Trevor Shea, told agents he had engaged in similar schemes with about 10 girls, most of them 17 or 18 years old.
His trial is set for Aug. 30. He has pleaded not guilty and his attorney, Michael Donahoe, said he is working on a possible settlement. ..Source.. CHARLES WILSON
December 10, 2009
Tribune Opinion: Dangers of sexting becoming evident
12-10-2009 Colorado:
Remember when you had to whisper something risqué into the basement phone and hope your parents — or your boyfriend's or girlfriend's parents — were too busy yelling at the contestant to buy a vowel on “Wheel of Fortune” to care?
Now, thanks to some tech geek's idea to put cameras in cell phones, our children face a new danger.
Media representatives, because we're clever, call it “sexting.”
“Sexting,” as you might guess, is texting with — well, you get the picture. And pictures are exactly the problem. Teens these days have somehow figured out to text one another and attach sexually explicit photos and videos. We are shocked — shocked! — that they would do this.
The problem is it can mean serious trouble.
When you say something, it disappears into the air. But people can save those texts and photos, and sometimes, they can use them for no good.
In fact, a 20-year-old was sentenced to four years in prison for extortion just last week for attempting to pry money out of a Weld County teen. She sent the California college student sexual photos and videos after starting a relationship with him, and he threatened to send them to her friends unless she paid him $1,500.
In other cases, sexting abuse has led to at least two teen suicides nationally (Florida and Ohio).
Not only is this dangerous, and quite frankly stupid, it could be illegal. Sending explicit photos over the Internet or through cell phones is considered sexual exploitation. You get caught for that, and you have to register as a sex offender and face being shunned for the rest of your life by neighbors who won't want you living nearby.
Relationships, especially those between teens, can be emotional, unpredictable and sometimes cruel.
The sad thing is some teens who send along these photos may not really see the harm, or they may be so wrapped up in a good relationship that they don't think about the consequences. A classic stereotype of teenagers (and a more accurate one than they are willing to admit) is that they often are incapable of thinking about the consequences of an action.
Unfortunately, this means the naive, trusting nature that makes teens (occasionally) sweet, kind and fun should probably be switched off and replaced with a hard, questioning look at potential significant others or even friends, especially when it comes to sending photos through a cell phone.
This means parents now have something else to worry about. We need to remind our teens that even seemingly harmless photos — a photo of them making a gesture to the camera, for instance — can haunt them later in life.
Since it's nearly impossible to find a decent, working cell phone without a camera, at least tell teens to leave the camera off and urge them to tell their friends to do the same.
New technology can be convenient, but with it comes more potential for embarrassment than ever, even the time when you asked that cute girl or boy to the prom just as Dad got on the other line. ..Editorial Source.. by The Tribune
December 7, 2009
‘Sexting' turns into Weld County extortion case
12-7-2009 Colorado:
Weld teen learns difficult lesson in texting
The landscape of teen relationships is changing, and as technology grows, so do cyber relationships — and cyber crime.
One Weld County teen learned the hard way this past year as a relationship she started with a California college student after meeting him through the popular MySpace social networking site led to cell phone “sexting.” That led to an exchange of sexual photos and videos and an eventual extortion charge.
On Friday, that man, Geovany Alarcon, now 20, was sentenced to four years in prison. He was accused of threatening to send sexually explicit photos and videos of her to her friends if she did not pay him $1,500. He pleaded guilty in October to sexual exploitation of a child, but he was originally charged with extortion as well.
Court and Weld district attorney officials say this case was not only disturbing by its very nature, but representative of a growing trend with today's technology feeding right into criminal behavior. The relatively new phenomenon of “sexting” — texting with sexually explicit language or photos — is growing across the country. Bullying as a result of sexting is being blamed for at least two teen suicides.
“The days of the note passed in class, check box yes or no, are gone,” said Jennifer Finch, spokeswoman for the Weld District Attorney's office. “It does start out as something flirty or impulsive and not thinking of the consequences. ... People will read this, but think, ‘My kid wouldn't do that.' But it doesn't start with kids sending sexually explicit photos. It's a gradual escalation, and you just go down that slippery slope.”
According to the Associated Press, more than a quarter of young people have been involved in sexting, but many do not know their actions could be criminal. Sending explicit photos over the Internet or through cell phones is legally considered sexual exploitation, in most cases, a felony that could bring with it a lifetime stigma as a sex offender.
“The unfortunate things is when we handle it, we're too late,” said deputy district attorney Anthony Perea, who prosecutes all the sex crimes against children cases for the Weld District Attorney's office, after Alarcon's sentencing Friday. “That's why we're trying to inform parents that they can stop it. When I'm involved, it's too late.”
Alarcon admitted to police to forcing the 17-year-old girl into making sexually explicit videos of herself and demanding $1,500 from her not to distribute the photos. He told police, however, “It was just a joke, I swear.”
Alarcon, 19 at the time, met the girl in August 2008 through MySpace. He was listed as the co-captain of the Delta Sigma Chi fraternity's soccer club through San Jose State University. They exchanged phone numbers and the texting began. As their relationship grew, he requested more photos of her body, and she sent him photos of her in various stages of undress. He then began requesting videos of her performing sexual acts, helped her set up a MySpace to display these videos to entice other men to have sex with her, and eventually he asked her to find a young girl to perform sexual acts with and videotape it.
That request was the last straw, apparently, and the girl decided to end the relationship.
“Once she wanted to terminate the relationship, he became very cruel and demanded extreme acts,” according to a police affidavit of the case. “... She had to make videos for him in order to please him. She was begging him to leave her alone and not send out the photos.”
The girl finally went to her mother, who called police — six months after that relationship began through online flirtations. Though only speaking with him once on the phone, the girl told police she had fallen in love with him and complied with his requests because of that.
Prior to his sentencing, Alarcon told Weld District Court Judge Tom Quammen that he was glad he was caught early, so he couldn't commit any more crimes.
“Not one person will ever be victimized by my hands again, may God and this court be witness,” Alarcon said Friday, after his attorney argued for a community corrections sentence. “My eyes have been ripped open. ... I understand that crimes like mine escalate to crimes that are more serious. I'm thankful I'm here now.”
Quammen said that while he was impressed that Alarcon took responsibility for his crime, the acts, nevertheless, were “very disturbing” and something he could not ignore.
“This crime is particularly serious and troublesome because so much of what happened was for your sexual gratification at the expense of a 17-year-old girl,” Quammen said. “The humiliation you caused her is devastating. Threatening her with having these videos and pictures to be broadcast was not only humiliating to her but for someone of her tender years is particularly devastating. ... This is not the typical texting phenomenon that seems to be in the culture. This went way beyond that.” ..Source.. Sharon Dunn
July 9, 2009
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
February 16, 2009
Facebook: Students Are Going From Sexting...Sextortion?
2-16-2009 National:
On December we wrote about the good reasons of not becoming friends with your student in Facebook. Before, we've also asked how social networks such as Facebook can be used in Education?
We've also referred to the dual chances that social networks could be either, good or bad to making friends but also cyberbullying. What's wrong with fearless students and clueless parents?. Well, the answer is here:For years, educators and parents focused on the perceived threat of Internet predators, coming into children's live via technology.
After reading this two stories, its clear that the dangers are closer by. New Berlin teen accused of using Facebook for sexual blackmail. Anthony R. Stancl, 18, posing as a female on Facebook, persuaded at least 31 boys to send him naked pictures of themselves and then blackmailed some of the boys into performing sex acts under the threat that the pictures would be released to the rest of the high school, according a criminal complaint.Student Fights Record of ‘Cyberbullying’.
A student who was suspended from high school for ranting against a teacher on Facebook is suing to have the blemish removed from her record.But, who's keeping students safe online?
Fewer than 25 percent of educators feel comfortable teaching students how to protect themselves from online predators, cyberbullies and identity thieves, says a new study from the National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA) and Educational Technology, Policy Research and Outreach (ET PRO). ..News Source..
August 23, 2008
CA- Police: Accused Extortionist, Molester Used MySpace In Crimes
8-23-2008 California:
Man Demanded Money, Nude Pictures Via Alias, Officials Say
MURRIETA, Calif. -- A 21-year-old San Diego man who allegedly pretended to be a girl on the Internet to coerce a girl into sending him nude photos of herself pleaded not guilty Friday to extortion and other felonies.
Anthony Cardinale is also charged with making criminal threats, bringing into the state matter depicting child sex, and annoying or molesting a child under 18.
He allegedly threatened the girl and her family while pretending to be a girl named Debbie Larson on the Internet.
Sheriff's detectives from the Lake Elsinore substation began investigating Cardinale in early July, said Sgt. Michael Yates.
On Aug. 7, investigators served a search warrant at his San Diego home and arrested him, Yates said.
Friday, Riverside Superior Court Judge Duane Lloyd raised his bail from $25,000 to $50,000 and ordered him back to court Aug. 28 for a felony settlement conference. A preliminary hearing was tentatively set for Sept. 4.
According to the Valley News in Temecula, there are two alleged victims from Lake Elsinore, one 18 and the other 17, who were both minors at the time of the alleged crimes, and the younger one was Cardinale's sometime girlfriend.
According to an affidavit cited by the newspaper, the investigation began July 10 when the girls went to the Riverside County sheriffs station in Lake Elsinore and said a girl named Debbie Larson, with whom they had communicated only over the Internet, had been threatening them for two years.
Cardinale allegedly introduced the older girl to "Larson" via the social networking site MySpace.com, and after a few months, "she" asked the girl for nude photos. When the girl refused, "Larson" allegedly threatened to kill her.
At that point, "Larson" began sending e-mails to the younger girl with similar demands.
When she also refused, "Larson" threatened to "get people to hurt" the two victims and their families.
"Larson" also allegedly demanded $3,000 in addition to the nude photos, according to the affidavit cited by the newspaper.
The girls talked to Cardinale, thinking he was a friend of "Larson," and Cardinale allegedly told them "Larson" was the head of an "underground cult," the head of an organized crime group and the daughter of a "crooked cop."
He allegedly told the girls to do what "Larson" asked and not call authorities. He also allegedly offered to help pay the $3,000 by selling his van.
At that point, the younger girl sent "Larson" nude photos of herself and the threats stopped.
When the younger girl broke up with Cardinale last November, still unaware that "Larson" was an alias, he threatened to kill himself and she agreed to continue the relationship.
When she again broke up with him last April, she allegedly began getting more e-mails from "Larson," who said their deal was off and "she" wanted more money and more nude photos, according to the affidavit cited by the newspaper.
The girl borrowed $1,500 from friends to pay off "Larson" and sent "her" more photos.
Cardinale allegedly collected the money to give to Larson. The girls then alerted authorities.
After finding no evidence of a Debbie Larson, investigators determined that Cardinale had been accessing "her" e-mail account on his computer.
They were able to find out his address in San Diego, where they executed a search warrant and seized his computer gear, along with a photo of the younger girl.
In another case involving using fake identities to contact a young girl on the Internet, Lori Drew, a St. Louis-area woman accused of using a fictitious MySpace profile of a boy to drive her daughter's 13-year-old former friend to suicide is on trial in federal court in Los Angeles.
Drew, 49, of O'Fallon, Mo., was indicted in Los Angeles on one count of conspiracy and three counts of accessing protected computers without authorization to obtain information to further a tortious act.
Drew allegedly helped create the MySpace account of "Josh Evans," a fictitious teenage boy. Using MySpace, "Evans" struck up an online romance with Megan Meier, a former friend of Drew's daughter.
The teen, who had been treated for depression, hanged herself in October 2006 after the "romance" soured and "Evans" sent her cruel messages, including one that said the world would be better off without her, according to court papers. ..News Source.. by 4KNBC.com
