130 Facebook pages to Harass - E-Impersonation

(U.S.)  Prosecutors say a Los Angeles man created 130 phony Facebook pages and posted Craigslist profiles to harass his 16-year-old ex-girlfriend.

The Los Angeles city attorney's office says 22-year-old Jesus Felix pleaded no contest on Wednesday to two counts of violating California's new impersonation law and one count of making harassing telephone calls.

He was placed on five years' probation and ordered to perform 30 days of road-crew community service. A one-year jail sentence was suspended on condition he complete anger management and sex therapy classes.

Prosecutors say in a news release that Felix created Facebook pages and Craigslist listings using photos of his ex-girlfriend. The girl's mother discovered online profiles with her daughter's contact information as well as sexually explicit photos.

The Internet impersonation law went in effect Jan. 1.

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HOW TO MAKE E-IMPERSONATION A CRIME IN YOUR STATE? CLICK HERE

Technology Used by Criminals to Track or Find Victims

by Tom Smith

Instead of lurking in bushes or hiding in the shadows outside of homes, stalkers have gone high-tech, using cell phones, computers and the Internet to hunt and track their victims.

"I know of some cases where people were stalked by e-mail or through Facebook or another social networking site," said Bryan Oakley, an agent with the FBI's Huntsville office who specializes in Internet crime.

He said technology is so advanced that tracking software can be added to telephones, cell phones or laptop computers.

"(Cyberstalking) is something that five years ago would be difficult to do, but there are more people using technology every day," Oakley said. "A lot of people use Twitter or Facebook to file what they are doing and where they are doing it, every minute of the day.

"People put out information about where they're traveling, where they work, pictures of their car, their friends, or themselves. They put out all the information someone stalking another person would need to know."

According to statistics released by the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network (RAINN), in Washington D.C., there are 3.4 million stalking victims each year. Of those, one in four victims said they have experienced a form of cyberstalking.

Alexis Moore said most people are naive about the problem.

"They have the mindset of 'it's not going to happen to me.' It does; it happened to me," said Moore, a California resident who was stalked by a former intimate friend.

"He was opening and closing my bank accounts," she said. "He never went as far as stealing from me, but I was not able to cash a check because he was making it where I was overdrawn all the time," she said. "He was going online, paying my bills on my accounts with money I didn't have, trying to ruin my credit."

She said the actions were not classified as crimes, but it was a nuisance.

"I never thought something like this would happen to me," Moore said.

To put a stop to the problem, Moore "shut down everything and lived off cash for a while."

"It was a sinister game to him, just trying to drive me crazy," she said.

Phil Bridgemon, instructor and chairman of the Criminal Justice Department at the University of North Alabama, said cyberstalking is the new wave of crime.

"People need to take this very seriously," he said. "Knowing this should cause everyone who uses a computer to manage their online identity better and more closely. There are no secrets; there is no modesty."

He said would-be stalkers search social networking sites, profiling people in hopes of finding a victim.

Katherine Hull, vice president of communications for RAINN, said people need to be aware of what they are putting online.

"People get online, and they think their activity is anonymous, but it isn't," she said. "They post things, get in a chat room and say something that leaves themselves wide open to becoming a victim of cyberstalking.

"Technology is a wonderful thing, but it opens us up to be vulnerable."

Bridgemon agrees.

"Because of the information that we put out there on the Internet, stalkers can follow someone around and never leave their home," he said.

Parry Aftab, a spokeswoman for Wired Safety, an online safety group, said people need to be taught digital hygiene.

"They have to be taught how to use the Internet and social networking systems in a safe manner," she said. "Unfortunately, that's something that people never think of before it's too late.

"Not only do they not see this coming, but they don't know they need to see it coming," Aftab said.

"We have got to do a better job in educating the public about this growing problem."

Michelle Collins, an official with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, said her agency has had a cyber tip line for 12 years in an effort to learn more about cyber crimes.

"Last year, we received 120,000 calls," Collins said. "Many of those were about cyberstalking."

She said cyberstalking often leads to physical assaults.

Collins said there was an incident in Wyoming where an ex-boyfriend put a posting online claiming his ex-girlfriend had a rape fantasy and needed people who would fulfill that fantasy.

"They actually showed up at her house and raped her," Collins said.

Franklin County District Attorney Joey Rushing said there is no one definition of a cyberstalker.

"They come in all shapes, sizes, ages and backgrounds," he said. "They patrol Web sites looking for an opportunity to take advantage of people."

He said in Alabama cyberstalking falls under the stalking law, which is a felony.

Sheffield Police Chief Greg Ray said a few years ago his department worked on cybercrimes trying to catch people who were using the Internet to prey on underage girls. He said in setting up sting operations, three people, two from other states, were arrested.

"What they were doing was basically stalking these children or the profiles of these children," Ray said.

Hull said RAINN tries to stress the importance of being careful with information put on the Internet.

"We are living in an age where people are living a vast part of their lives online. That's why we encourage folks to think twice about what kind of information they put on the Internet," Hull said.

"Criminals take advantage of any tools they can, and (the Internet) is just another new tool at their disposal," Oakley said.

Moore said there have already been too many victims of cyberstalking.

"It's an invisible crime, one where the victim is usually not beat up or one where we can see the criminal," Moore said. "The answer is education, starting at the younger ages, teaching school-age children how to use technology the right way - the safe way."

original article here

Case Highlights 'Spoofing' and Other Electronic Stalking

By Nathan Gorenstein

The e-mailed threat was stark. "How would you like it if your sister went missing?" The next message was an insult. "Whore," the writer said, and taunted, "You called the cops but they can't do anything."

Todd Hart, 26, had reason to believe his boast was accurate.

The victim, an ex-girlfriend he threatened for weeks last June, had called police about earlier disturbing e-mails. They immediately asked for copies.

Problem was, the e-mails had all disappeared. Twenty minutes after the woman opened each electronic message, it somehow automatically deleted itself from her computer's in-box.

So a police officer sat down at the woman's computer to see the next threat himself.

By July, the FBI was knocking at the door of Hart, a former SEPTA employee now being held in jail. On Monday, he will be sentenced in U.S. District Court for a string of electronic attacks on the woman, her friends, and her family. He pleaded guilty in November.

"For about a month, when all the harassment was going on, I would sit in my room and pray to God that it would stop," the 24-year-old woman, who lives in California, wrote in a victim's statement. Her name is redacted from sentencing documents.

In the course of a few hours one evening last year, prosecutors believe, Hart dispatched a sewer repairman, a pizza deliverer, and an electrician to her father's house.

After a short relationship - initiated on an online dating site - Hart reacted with fury when the woman announced she was moving from Philadelphia to take an internship at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories in California.

First, he threatened suicide. Then came the stalking.

The self-deleting e-mails were an unusual touch: Even the experienced federal prosecutor in Philadelphia had not encountered it before.

Hart also used a second tactic, called "spoofing," to make harassing calls that recipients could not trace to his telephone number.

Using "SpoofCard.com," one of many Internet services that permit callers to hide their phone number and even change the sound of their voice, Hart made calls warning the woman that she had 10 days to leave California "or else." In another call, he said, "You're going to [obscenity] die."

Thanks to modern electronics, that wasn't all.

Using passwords obtained while they lived together, Hart canceled a doctor's appointment, changed the passwords on the woman's e-mail and Facebook accounts, took control of her bank accounts, and deleted her application to take the Medical College Admission Test.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Levy is asking for a sentence of at least 57 months, a year above the federal guidelines. "To say that this defendant has serious emotional problems when it comes to dealing with women is an understatement," he has told the judge.

He also offers some advice: Completely revise a password whenever you believe it is compromised. And be careful with whom you share a password.

Hart's attorney, federal public defender Mark T. Wilson, did not return messages seeking comment.

Hart pleaded guilty to stalking and unauthorized use of a computer. Such crimes are usually prosecuted in state court, but he is facing a federal judge because the victim worked at a federal institution, Livermore, whose internal police force the woman had initially contacted.

Among other scientific work, Lawrence Livermore is the nation's top nuclear-weapons research lab, though the woman, a biology and premed major, was not employed in that research.

Hart has previous convictions for forgery, and in 2003 he was convicted in Burlington County "for almost identical" stalking charges, Levy said. In 2005, he was convicted for sneaking into a women's bathroom at Immaculata College and videotaping students as they used the toilet. He initially received probation, but within 18 months he was in violation and served time in jail, according to court documents. He is in Chester County Jail for again violating his probation.

When FBI agents searched his Philadelphia apartment, they discovered a telescopelike object called a "peephole reverser."

"The agents tested it and determined that it enabled a viewer to look into an apartment through the peephole," according to court documents.

"The Federal Bureau of Prisons does have counseling programs," Levy said in an interview, "and he clearly needs counseling. I don't know if he would be cured."

Levy, who has wide experience handling computer crime, said it was the first case he had handled involving self-deleting e-mails.

No one from the mail service Hart used, BigString in Red Bank, N.J., returned calls or messages seeking comment.

The company is in financial trouble, according to corporate records, but at least a half-dozen other firms offer such services, according to their websites. Various technology is used. BigString promises that once the recipient clicks on the message sent through its servers, the mail will "self-destruct" within a specified time period.

On its website, the firm adds, "The mail, while looking like every other mail, will print nothing when the receiver clicks print on the computer and show nothing if the receiver tries to save the text or image."

The second technique Hart used is more common. Spoofing has been controversial enough that Congress last year made it illegal to hide the origin of a telephone call "unless a legitimate business reason exists," according to pending Federal Communications Commission regulations.

Meir Cohen, president of SpoofCard.com, said that despite the firm's name, its intent is to provide legitimate services. As an example, he cited an on-call physician who may use a personal cell phone to contact a patient but wants return calls to go to his office or answering service first. The doctor can have one of those numbers appear on the patient's telephone instead.

"The vast majority of our customers use it as a tool to protect their privacy," Cohen said. "A large portion of customers are really women who want to protect their privacy and don't want [stalkers] to have their numbers."

Cohen, who was familiar with the Hart case, said, "My heart goes out to the victim."

SpoofCard.com cooperates with law enforcement, he said, and "we will hand over records if we are subpoenaed."

original article here

Texas Man Arrested for "Spoofing"

Missouri City Police Department’s arrest of a Stafford man for Internet harassment and “spoofing” was the first of its kind in Texas using a new law that went into effect Sept. 1 of last year. The crime is so new that police had to call Austin to figure out how to get the charge entered into computers because a number had yet to be assigned.

Years ago, Missouri City police were also the first to charge someone with failure to register as a sex offender.

All of the benefits of technology also come with a price – for every new and innovative way discovered to communicate and do business, criminals will find new and innovative ways to use the technology for malicious purposes.

The Texas Legislature passed House Bill 2003 as an effort to keep up with how the Internet and electronic communication have changed the ways people can harass and possibly harm one another.

The new section in the penal code makes “Online Harassment” a crime, and deals with two separate issues.

The first makes it a third degree felony to use someone else’s identity to create a web page or message on a commercial social networking site without that person’s consent and with malicious intent. “Commercial Networking” includes Internet sites such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter.

The second section deals with what is called “spoofing,” now a Class A Misdemeanor. Spoofing is when someone sends an electronic message, such as an e-mail or an instant message, pretending to be someone else. If the intent of the message was to solicit a response from emergency personnel, it is a third degree felony.

Wesley Wittig, an assistant district attorney with the Fort Bend County District Attorney’s Office, said that prosecuting new crimes does not necessarily present any difficulties, as the law is clear on what constitutes each crime. The difference with new charges is that there is no history of rulings that attorneys can use for research when preparing.

Missouri City police charged 54-year-old Stafford resident John Johnson with Internet Harassment and spoofing earlier this month, after they say he set up a fake dating site account and posed as the victim while instant messaging.

Missouri City police were called by a nervous and scared 35-year-old Missouri City woman who told police she received a phone call from a strange man who told her he had just been to her house, and no one answered the door. He told her he even tried the front door, but it was locked.

She asked the stranger where she lived, and he gave her the correct address. She told him she didn’t know who he was, and he said he had been having Instant Messaging conversations with her on the computer after having met her on the Internet dating site Plenty of Fish. He told her she invited him over.

The victim knew nothing about the man, the site or the alleged conversations.

After investigating, police say Johnson set up a fake account on the dating site, complete with photos of the victim and her correct home address, cell phone number and location of her work. Johnson is the boyfriend of the victim’s boyfriend’s mother, who apparently wanted to end the relationship between her son and the victim.

It is still unclear who was pretending to be the victim during the online conversations.

original article here