A Fairfield, Illinois man is accused of creating a fake Myspace page and sending threatening messages online.
21 year-old Justin Savage faces felony charges of cyber-stalking, identity theft, and electronic harassment of a witness.
Officers say Justin Savage was involved in a minor fight last year. They believe he wanted to scare a witness to that crime, so she would withdraw her police statement.
They say Savage created a Myspace profile that looked exactly like the one belonging to a former friend -- a man who goes by the nickname 'Sabetya.'
"He created this duplicate account because he knew somehow that the victim was afraid of this friend of his" says Wayne County Detective Jonah Kinsolving.
Kinsolving says Savage was afraid of being prosecuted for a fight he'd been involved in, so he used the fake site to make online threats to a witness, and they became very serious.
"He was offering to pay anyone $7000 to have her killed, and her family killed. He told her that he'd been on her property, seen her bedroom, and knew what time she goes to bed" says Kinsolving.
Kinsolving says the victim was terrified, wondering why a man named Sabetya -- who'd she never met -- wanted to hurt her.
The case took months to sort out.
"You can't just send out a blanket subpoena saying 'I want this Myspace account.' You have to say 'I want this Myspace account on this day, at this specific time.'
After a lengthy investigation, Kinsolving says he was able to determine that Justin Savage was pretending to be Sabetya, and was the person making the threats.
What Savage may not have realized is that his online harassment is a class 3 felony.
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"I don't think a lot of people realize it is a crime, but more people will get in trouble for it" says Kinsolving. "Hopefully, they'll start to watch what they type."
Justin Savage is free on bond. His first court appearance is set for March 12th.
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1 comment:
Can't do enough to catch these awful crooks. Way to go!
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