MAN CHARGED WITH REVENGE PORN, IDENTITY THEFT & EXTORTION CHARGES

(USA) -- A San Diego judge determined prosecutors have enough evidence against the alleged operator of a revenge porn site for him to face trial on conspiracy, identity theft and extortion charges, a state spokesman said Monday.

Kevin Christopher Bollaert, 27, appeared before San Diego County Superior Court Judge David M. Gill on Monday and returns to court July 16 for what's being heralded as the first case against a revenge porn site operator, said Nicholas Pacilio, a spokesman for California Attorney General Kamala Harris. Bollaert has pleaded not guilty to 31 felony counts.

His attorney Alexander Landon did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Authorities say Bollaert earned tens of thousands of dollars operating two websites for the scheme.

Prosecutors say at one site, people uploaded nude pictures without permission of those photographed and listed their names, cities and links to their Facebook profiles. When asked to remove photos, Bollaert allegedly contacted victims from a separate website and charged them up to $350. Bollaert voluntarily took the sites both offline when contacted by investigators last year, Pacilio said.

The term "revenge porn" is used because most of the explicit images have been posted online by former lovers in attempts to shame their former partners after a breakup.

The images used can be obtained consensually during a relationship or can be stolen or hacked from online accounts.

The practice resulted in a new California law that makes it a misdemeanor to post identifiable nude pictures of someone else online without their permission and with the intent of causing serious emotional distress or humiliation, though that law was not cited in the charges against Bollaert.

Unlike most revenge porn sites, investigators said Bollaert's requirement that a victim's personal information be included is what led to the identity theft allegations.

Bollaert's also charged with obtaining identifying information with the intent to annoy or harass. The extortion charges are for allegedly charging women to remove those photos through the second website. Victims were unaware that Bollaert was allegedly operating both sites and investigators determined the connection during the probe, Pacilio said.

Authorities say he told investigators during a six-month investigation that he received about $900 each month from online advertising. But PayPal records show he's received tens of thousands of dollars.

In addition to Bollaert, the attorney general has arrested another alleged operator of a revenge porn site. Casey E. Meyering, 28, of Tulsa, Oklahoma was extradited from Oklahoma to stand trial in California two weeks ago, Pacilio said.


ORIGINAL ARTICLE FOUND HERE

If You're Accusing or Exposing - Make Sure It's the Correct Person!

PROMINENT writer and radio broadcaster Marieke Hardy has issued an apology to a Melbourne man she incorrectly accused of authoring a hate blog against her.

In early November Ms Hardy, a regular panelist on the ABC’s First Tuesday Book Club, drew media attention for naming Joshua Meggitt as the alleged author behind a long running campaign of online harassment against her.

Pointing the finger at Mr Meggitt even sparked a Twitter campaign under the hashtag #mencallmethings, in which many female tweeters and bloggers reposted some of the worst online comments that had been made about themselves.

In the December 23 post on her blog, Ms Hardy issued a formal apology, saying: “For over five years I have been the victim of a hate blog against me. On 9 November 2011 I incorrectly identified Joshua Meggitt on this site as the man responsible for writing that blog.

“I accept that Joshua is not the writer and I sincerely apologise to him and his family for any upset caused.”

According to The Sydney Morning Herald, Ms Hardy is believed to have paid Mr Meggitt a legal settlement of $13,000.

original article found here

Man's Blog about Ex-Girlfriend Ordered Down

Takedown of Man’s Blog Harassing Ex-Girlfriend Upheld

by David L. Hudson, Jr.  -- First Amendment Scholar

A Minnesota trial court did not violate the First Amendment rights of man by entering a harassment-restraining order that forced him to remove a blog about his relationship with his former girlfriend.

Andrew John Arlotta and Ann Johnson had a romantic relationship from late 2008 to September 2009. After the relationship ended, Arlotta continued to contact Johnson against her wishes. Johnson successfully obtained an HRO for six months that prevented Arlotta from violating her security or privacy or contacting her by any means.

Two days after the HRO went into effect, Arlotta created a blog called “Help Anna Johnson” that documented his relationship problems with Johnson. It questioned her mental health and stability. Arlotta sent messages about the blog to her relatives, friends and high school classmates. He also sent a message to her employer.

As a result of the blog, Johnson obtained another order from the court imposing an additional restraining order that was to last until March 2062 — for 51 years. The new HRO ordered Arlotta to remove his blog about Johnson from the Internet.

Arlotta appealed the trial court’s order. He contended that the new HRO was an unconstitutional prior restraint on “pure speech” in violation of the First Amendment. Prior restraints are laws, regulations or orders that place significant pre-publication hurdles on speech or prevent speech from occurring altogether.

The Minnesota Court of Appeals determined in its Dec. 12 opinion in Arlotta v. Johnson that the order was legitimate because Arlotta had engaged in a pattern of conduct that substantially violated Johnson’s privacy. The appeals court also rejected the idea that the HRO order was an unconstitutional prior restraint on speech. The state has a compelling interest in protecting Johnson from harassment, the appeals court said, further concluding that Arlotta did not engage in protected speech, but unprotected harassment.

“Because the HRO prohibits unprotected speech, we conclude that it is not an impermissible prior restraint,” the court wrote.

Minnesota law allows harassment orders to remain in place for up to 50 years. The appeals court reduced the effective period of the order against Arlotta by only one year.

original article found here

CYBERPATHS: PROJECTING & HURLING ACCUSATIONS

After the relationship is over
or When they are Exposed

Cyberpaths project their faults and failings onto their victims (bad character flaws/deeds) , but they also project their feelings, and beliefs onto the victim also.

These beliefs the Cyberpath hold could be about themselves, the victim or others.

You can think of "projection" as the Cyberpath posing in the image of your face, they are projecting (throwing) all those bad flaws, deeds and beliefs about themselves unto you.

These feelings or beliefs might be positive ones or negative ones.

Positive Projection

Projecting positive things onto the victim he is using her as a mirror so the good deeds are "reflected" back unto him. Making him appear as the one who is marvellous, grand, worthy etc (his grandiose false image)

Negative Projection

Same thing - The Cyberpath projects his bad deeds, habits, thoughts and belief onto the mirror (The Victim) in order to make her appear that she is at fault and these "Negative things" are hers and not his.


Whilst doing this, the Cyberpath is in effect using the victim as a dumping ground. (Almost everything that has happened to the Cyberpath, including his own mistakes - is blamed on the victim.)

Slandering The Victim

When Cyberpaths slander their victims , they have two objectives. One is projection and the other is to "dirty a bright spot in your character" with whatever slander they are projecting at you. It's as though any shine on your image diminishes the glow of their glory.

This is of course the mentality of the rapist, who must tear others "down off that pedestal"

Projection and smearing at the same time isn't hard for the Cyberpath, in fact it's uncanny how Cyberpaths manage to accomplish it. It's all in the way they word their "line" on you. They are glib and amazingly adept at "killing two birds with one stone"

They not only ditch one of their faults, they muddy one of your virtues in the process.

Note: In doing this, the Cyberpath isn't attacking your faults and shortcomings, he is attacking your virtues and accomplishments. Consequently when he is conducting a campaign of character assassination against someone, the arrows he shoots never hit one of that person's real flaws

The Cyberpaths False image contains the virtuous qualities in other people's characters , and their images have had those virtuous qualities replaces with the flaws in the Cyberpaths character. In other words, the Cyberpath steals your virtues and dumps on you his faults.

In doing so, the Cyberpath is stealing your identity, pulling an identity switch with you, piecemeal.

It's kind of magical , an illusion created with nothing but words, which can warp perceptions by making anything of anything. For example: let's say that the Cyberpath is stingy and that one of your virtues is that you are outstanding for you generosity. He hates the glow of that shiny spot in your character, because it serves as foil to his stinginess, making it more noticeable by contrast. So he muddies your image and glorifies his image by misappropriating your generosity to himself and misappropriating his stinginess in you.

How? he goes around lying about how much she gives to charity and about helping people out all the time. More important (since one must be careful and subtle about boasting) , he just makes everything she does sound generous. He also goes around telling lying stories about you , stories that you are "stingy". More important, he makes everything you do sound stingy, however generous it manifestly is.

Normal people do not project. They may sometimes smear, but not in such a calculated , manipulative fashion.


Normal People Vs The Cyberpath

Normal people - Project when put on the defensive

Cyberpaths - Project in unprovoked attacks


Normal people don't smear themselves off on just anyone. They wouldn't dream of harming those near and dear. Or those they 'need'.

Cyberpaths see people as objects and nothing more, so they smear people off to anyone who will listen as thoughtlessly as we smear ourselves on a towel. For no other reason than to cause pain.


Normal people are likely to shake themselves off on whoever happens to be near at the moment. So they sometimes project a flaw off onto someone who actually has it.

Cyberpaths project ironically, accusing those with the corresponding virtue of a vice


Normal people stick to slander (which has some degree of truth to it) rarely engaging in calumny (lies) when they do calumniate someone, they at least have a natural reason for animosity toward the target.

Cyberpaths are perverted, there is no natural reason for what they do, they do it because they want to and because they can.


Normal people who do calumniate someone, they don't go hog-wild and calumniate that person so badly and so widely as to destroy them and ruin their whole lives.

Cyberpaths go hog wild , they are mental children and therefore as dangerous with their mouths as an angry five-year old with an assault weapon. Often, once exposed, they will often publish blogs or make posts on sites about how bad or dangerous the victim is. They accomplish this by rewriting and tweaking history to view them as the victim.

The Cyberpath is likely to smear off on someone he owes gratitude to, because needing help damages his image. He repays help as thought it were an insult , a threat. He must devalue it by devaluing the giver of it, as if such a contemptible person is incapable of really helping someone as grand as he.

Normal people don't do it because damaging others makes them feel good. In fact, doing this makes a normal person feel ashamed. But it makes a Cyberpath feel grand.

When it's fully conscious calumny a Cyberpath is spreading , he just thinks it's funny that people are such idiots that he can get away with it, feeding them ridiculous lines about others. Lines that are preposterous in the light of the target's known conduct. Cyberpaths will all let it be known at one time or another that they had nothing but contempt for the people who believed them. A Cyberpath views his success at lying as proof that he is brilliant and that all mere mortals are as stupid as sticks.

Cyberpaths are not projecting guilt so much as they're projecting shame. In fact, it may well be that they have no concept of guilt and have it confused with shame. Which is pain. So this wicked behaviour is a way to ditch their pain onto you. It's a psychological painkiller, a drug, and that's why causing you pain makes him feel good.


Here is an example of a famous smear that illustrates how it works.

The first thing people noticed about Jesus of Nazareth was that, unlike the other prophets, he spoke on his own authority, appealing only to logic, and never prefaced his teaching with "God says...." This is but one of many example of his exceptional care to avoid blasphemy. He went way beyond custom in this regards. His tremendous reverence for the name of God was his most glaring virtue, but he put everyone , including the prophets, to shame in this.

Okay, so , if you or I wanted to smear Jesus, blasphemy would be the last thing we'd accuse him of, right? Because that accusation would be laughed at as a joke.

Or would it?

Well, whether people would get the joke or not, we're normal, so we'd accuse him of something believable, like being a drunk or something. But that isn't the way a Cyberpath thinks.

The narcissistic in the Sanhedrin who plotted against Jesus went right for that greatest shining virtue of his in leveling the charge of blasphemy against him. They just had to muddy it o'er.

Unbelievable. Yet the people believed it!

And consider the source of this accusation. Look who's accusing him of blasphemy. The Sanhedrin, blasphemously acting in the name of God.

In other words, in the very act, they were projecting the blot of their sin onto his outstanding virtue.

Unbelievable. Yet the people believed it.

Near the beginning of the Spanish Inquisition, a Spanish archbishop or cardinal (whose name I forget) remarked that the accusations leveled by the Inquisition were so widely believed because people are much readier to believe the unbelievable than the obvious. He said a mouthful.

Cyberpaths are projection machines, I am convinced that projection is a knee -jerk reflex in them. That is, whenever a moment of self-awareness threatens to let them know a flaw in their character they're revealing or some bad deed they are doing, they instantly go into denial about it (Repressing conscience of shame) by projecting the semblance of that flaw or misdeed off onto the handiest scapegoat- usually the very victim of whatever abuse they are dishing out.

How's that for maximum irony? Hence, while hurling a hailstorm of wild accusations at you, you can count off one of them being that you are hurling wild accusations at them. Every single time. They can't help it. I think they have been twisting their thinking for so long (since early childhood) that twisted thinking is hard-wired into their brains. I think projection is such an ingrained habit in them that often they're unaware they are doing it at times.

Projection is such a reflex in them that they give themselves away by some of the accusation they hurl. For example, if a Cyberpath says he fear you might attack him physically, look out" he is at least pondering whether to attack you physically. If he says he fears you might get into his bank account or spend his money, know that he is at least pondering getting into yours and spending your money. Every single time!

Cyberpaths are not the only people who project. But they are different in that they have done it so much for so long that they do it like a machine - automatically, every single time. They rarely hit one of target's real faults. Instead the accusation is a joke, smearing one of that person's virtues as a vice.

taken from the work of Kathy Krajco

(written in about the male-gender your Cyberpath may well be female)