DOUG BECKSTEAD - A TEXTBOOK CASE OF CYBERPATHY

At their core - most Cyberpaths are Narcissistic and/or Sociopathic types. Here's some input from other victims who posted to WikiAnswers on Narcissistic types - see how much fits our review of Predator: Doug Beckstead! (as always EOPC's comments are in dark blue)

* They are the biggest liars you've ever seen. They will look you right in your eyes, swear on a stack of bibles and tell you the biggest lie you've ever heard. They will say they're not going to do something, while plotting to do just what they say they wouldn't do. They're very out of touch with their feelings. They talk just to hear themselves talk - while not believing anything they're trying to convince you of.

* It will become obvious very soon: an over-inflated ego. Astonishing lies.

* A narcissist is, at first glance, a friendly, real person. This is the narcissist's bait. The person lures people in, only to control them, in any shape or form. You will not recognize this, but as time progresses, you will feel guilty. The most important thing to recognize is that you need to live your own life and not be controlled by a narcissist. They steal your relationships with people and haunt your feelings. They are a very special, wicked breed of people, who get away with what they do. My advice: be careful with who you meet; don't be misled.

* They will relate to the problems in your life, claiming that something very similar has happened to them. They make it sound like they and they alone truly understand and relate to you. They get you to share very personal things and make you feel like you've found someone who has been through what you have been through. And it's very comforting.

* It is difficult at first since they try to charm. Some traits: They have no real sense of humor; They manipulate and control; They talk but only to hear themselves; dominate conversations; They try to give people their opinions; They love attention; They are cheap.

* I am always surprised at their ability to brainwash people:

Everything they say is exaggeration, deception or lie.

Everyone word out of their mouth is 1) self praise or, 2)cut someone or some group down.

Biggest clue is that when they get done talking to you, you are left with a negative impression of someone, but the narcissist never came right out and said anything directly. They may have make snippy remarks or caustic comments about someone they say they know - but of course they will make sure you never interact with this person to find out for yourself!

* Narcissists are by definition liars. They appear to be something they are not. They seem educated, confidant, charming, and social. They are master manipulators and total control freaks. They have no emotions and are void of empathy. They feel for no one but themselves.

They are a bottomless pit that is never satisfied. They are incapable of giving and receieving true love.

They think they are better than everyone else, always right and never wrong, and their way is always the best way to do anything. They love attention.

They think only of themselves, but make you believe they are thinking of your best interests.

Their time is precious to them and you do not deserve any of their time unless it is to their benefit.

You exist solely to please them. To them, you are less than human, you are not worthy of their mere presence.

* Constant talking and praising while putting others down. They always know more about any topic than you do, and when they are unfamliar with the topic insists on immediately changing the topic.

Forgets their friends and families birthdays, and doesn't care about it; while at the same time expecting huge parties and lavish gifts for their own birthday.

Lies easily, and with such ease that it is difficult to detect, since it is so common.

Always wants more from you; you could never give enough.

Competes with people on every dimension; if you are sick, you should feel sorry for THEM since they feel bad that you are sick.

Never goes out of their way for anyone, even a dying "best" friend.

Thinks he is entitled to everything in the world; does not expect to earn anything.

He dominates (or tries to) any social gathering.

He sees himself as extremely talented and extraordinarily bright, more than most of the world.

No empathy with other people.

* Unfortunately you dont really detect anything until they have made sure your hooked. But I can list the most obvious traits I had in my nightmarish experience:

1. Will lie blatantly

2. Will lie about who they are, what they do, and even what they had for breakfast if they feel like it.

3. It's all about them and their problems and their needs all the time, if you try to tell them about you....disinterest will appear, and they lead it back to them.

4. Your emotions and feelings and needs mean nothing...you are only there for their needs...end of story.

5.Their moods and emotions are extreme...and one night they can be crying and sobbing and (sucking you dry for support) and the next day they havnt a worry in the world.

6. They will push, beg and cajole push for what they want until you succumb to their wishes or needs regardless of how you feel about it. (even saying "I love you" to get something they want out of you)

7. They have to be with people - can't be alone. They will keep partners with them with begging and lies while carrying on affairs with a number of other people.

8. They are never at fault, and even if they say it once or twice that they are...its only words to make them seem more human.

9. When they find other better fresher supplies of attention...you will become non-existant, until they may need you again one day when they may just rear their heads again and try and suck you back in.

10. They will be nice as pie to your face and turn around and tell the next person they see that you mean nothing to them.

11. They are master manipulators and use any information they have on you to control you and get them what they want.

12. Their emotions are shallow and have no meaning and everyone in their lives are nothing but a source of attention.

13. They say things that are so out there that you think they are from another planet.

With all this in mind, here's more from Beckstead's Targets and more blather from Beckstead:

Doug had just IM'd for the first time in a long time and towards the end he dropped the bombshell about moving back home to Anchorage for good. (He probably already HAD moved back for good - unless maybe he was always there)

There had been no prior warning or mention of a new job. We were left stunned and did not know how to respond to him after that. It was one of the rare occasions that he ever apologised.

(But notice he apologizes but still tries to make them feel guilty for being upset with him! They all do this in one way or another. For example - Dunetz/ Yidwithlid had the bad taste to tell one of his Targets ALLLL about having 'marital relations' with his wife. When this Target told him that was inappropriate and "too much information" -- Dunetz/ YidwithLid's response? "But you told me to work on my marriage!" [note how this predator confused "SEX" with "WORKING ON HIS MARRIAGE"]

Has yours ever done the "YOU said we should see other people?" or "I have a real life, you know" just to blame shift to you -- AFTER LETTING YOU KNOW THEY WANT YOU AROUND 24/7? Suddenly YOU'RE the obsessed one? We know different!)

At the end, the cad expected to keep everything the same, regardless of returning home to his wife, which says a lot about his character. This was the man that had said his "marriage was a marriage in name only". It was a marriage that he had originally hidden and after everything else he had said, he did this. (wow what a guy! Got to feel sorry for the wife and all his other targets. Amazing how all cyberpaths somehow twist their ethics & morality to suit their needs. Actions over Words, every time)

FYI - Doug Beckstead's "children" are 23 (married) and 24.

The last paragraphs where he mentions getting his own place, he did and it never changed a thing. Except the distance between us grew greater, he had even less time to talk, chat. We barely got to speak to one another, it was worse than before, when he had house mates. (he got bored with you and probably had other targets going - typical narcissist/cyberpath)

We know now that was because xxx must have lived there for some time. According to zabasearch she did. And the second job was dropped well before the move to his own place, he neglected to tell us about that too, it was only after he slipped and was going out to "fix" a lot of things for ladies that needed his help and he was playing darts more frequently that I found out. (He was already doing these things well before he said or mentioned them - its part of the degrade & devalue process meant to hurt you. They love for you to be the one to leave the relationship so they can play victim ["she left me and it really hurt"] with a new target all over again.)

There were so many discrepancies to his stories. At the end of the day we never truly knew what was fact and what was fiction, as far as he was concerned. (Cyberpaths are notoriously incongruent with time, place & history. They love to bend time and lie. We never can tell what is real with them and sadly enough - neither do they)

From: "Doug Beckstead" <>
Subject: I'm Sorry
Date: Sat, 15 Jul 2006 17:44:48 -0800

It looks like you're upset with me again. I do not want to hurt you. (Yes you do - in fact you probably get off on knowing you upset someone) I was hoping that you would be happy for me to finally be able to spend some time with my family rather than only over an occasional weekend. (there's that blame shifting again!)

I did not want to keep the news from you. And I did not tell you earlier because I did not want to burden you with extra problems while you were going through exams. (but I just couldn't wait to drop this bomb and further trauma bond you to me and my sick web of online mind games)

Why did you just drop offline? It made me feel really bad. (boo hoo... don't like it when its done to you, do you Doug? YOU should be the one doing that and controlling everything, right?)

Because I am going home does not change anything between us, at least not on my end it doesn't. (Because I am an amoral mind-game player who sees every woman as a potential whore for me and my massive ego - online or off)

love and hugs! (barf)

Doug

I found this email from Doug from 2004. (we can all fill in the blanks here) This is when things started happening and questions needed answering. (uh oh!) It took a long while to get these answers out of him. (took him a while to think them up, too)

Again he talks around things, this is where the accusations of "name calling" (he accused me of, first stemmed from). Again it was not name calling on our part just a distinct notice at the down turn in his attention and his list of excuses. You will notice how he starts to turn the blame in on us. (if you have read our other stories - they all do this. PROJECTION and BLAME-SHIFTING)

From this email and from other Targets onwards he accused us all of "angry responses", when it was nothing but pure frustration at having to wait for answers that seemed deliberately delayed on his end. (With any cyberpath, they believe that they are entitled to their anger but no one is entitled to be angry at them for any reason. Its part of their sickness)

None of us ever expected him to answer my emails straight away or answer them/open them at work as he has accused all of us. However, we did not expect to have wait for days on end, and have to keep asking the same questions to get an honest answer. (more blame-shifting; and you'd be waiting for a snowstorm in hell for an honest answer from a cyberpath)

Towards the end, last year I stopped writing as much and then he would ask me if "everything was alright", totally omitting the problem at hand. (Yes! Ed Hicks, Brad Dorsky, Gridney/ Yidwithlid, all did this when they didn't have their targets at their beck and call - but heaven forbid you ask THEM for accountability! They change the subject and never really answer the question - ON PURPOSE!)

As it turned out Beckstead's daughter's husband XXXX was jailed for 'malingering' in a Ketchican barracks (he was training to be a coast guard). XXXXX, Doug's son was going to Idaho to be with the mother of his child. (loads of 'responsible' people in the family we see... nod, wink)

Now the daughter and her husband live at home with them in Anchorage as does the son XXXXX, minus the son's girlfriend and baby. Doug wants them all under the same roof together, he has to have control of everything. (CONTROL CONTROL CONTROL & controlling the chaos too!)

It is a pity he could not have lived with them and been the father to them he should have been when they were growing up. (Maybe they learned their irresponsibility from him! - and can you imagine Beckstead giving up being the center of attention to a child? Besides, he wasn't much a man and couldn't possibly have been much of a father when he's out chasing his ego) Beckstead had probably planned everything out well in advance about moving back home, he truly thought that we'd all just carry on in the background to be picked up and dropped again at his whim. (they all do... you are just a mouse click when needed in their eyes)

In the past if any of us would try to back out, but he became a bad habit that was hard to break. (addiction is more like it with these guys and they brainwash you very thoroughly) He had worked hard to become first and foremost each of our closest friends. (exactly what he wanted) However, when things went wrong we were his favorite scapegoats! -- depending on which of us he was working over most at the time anything happened. (scapegoat? yes... textbook narcissistic cyberpath behavior)

We all asked ourselves why he had to turn so nasty and why he could not just be straight with any of us. (Because he's mentally ill - probably some Cluster B Personality Disorder would be our guess) He would lie and expect all to be forgiven, that we should be happy for him, never mind that he had put all of us on an emotional roller coasters. (if you read the other exposures - they ALL are like this - you aren't alone. Dorksy and Rodger turned their Targets into nervous wrecks, Dunetz/ YidwithLid sent Target #1 into the hospital a number of times - and Target #2 into a mental health hospital. Capers, Hicks, Jacoby, Bish, Thomas and Barber drove their Targets into intensive therapy and even bankruptcy. Some targets even contemplated suicide.)

Beckstead says "he valued our relationship" one of us received an ecard very similar about two weeks before that last nasty email he sent to me. A person who valued anyone so much would not have treated his family or us in the way he has. He obviously had no respect for any of us. (nope he didn't. None of them do. He probably picked up the verbiage from another card or something he read or heard on TV. If you read Hicks, Dunetz/ Yidwithlid, Jacoby and Thomas - they all talk about their 'oh-so-deep feelings' for you... their feelings are actually about as deep as a puddle; if they have any at all.)

From: "Doug Beckstead"
Subject: Good Evenin'
Date: Fri, 28 Jul 2006 21:32:08 -0800

Hi!

I just got home. I needed a little "unwind" time so I stopped down at the XXXXXX for a couple of drinks -- and spent some of the time texting XXX and XXXXX. Friday evenings are usually a lot of fun because the "regulars" are down there after work. Have you ever seen the tv show "CHEERS"? The XXXXX is a lot like the Fairbanks version of the bar in the show. The regulars are just that, regulars. And everybody eventually gets to know everybodies names and you never know when someone else is going to be buying a drink for you -- but it is expected that you will return the favor, if not that evening then on another. It's a real friendly bar. And XXX, the owner, treats our XXX team really well too so I like to patronize his place.

Now, to get to your questions ... as for my comment about ("You know when you said "you don't know what is going to happen", what did you mean by that exactly? Do you still hope that we will meet, and get to do everything we have spoken of? Do you still hold that true?") What I meant by that is that I don't have a crystal ball that holds all the answers for me. I cannot predict what may happen next month let alone next year or five years down the road. However, that does not mean that I want, or expect, anything to change between you and I. I value our relationship very, very much. (also word salad here! Beckstead didn't want to lose his cybertoy but that was all they'd would ever be. Also by keeping them reeled in - he was making sure none of them would tell on him, either)

It was hard not getting messages from you over the last week and I was really happy to get the ones that explained what was happening. I hope more than anything that some day we will eventually be able to meet, in person. (The ones that do meet you? Will stiff you with the bill, too)

Beyond that, I don't know what will happen. So, we just have to keep the good thoughts going. (hahahaha) I have not been trying to "pull back" or anything like that. ("you caught me! oh crap!") That's why I made the comment about staying in the background. I would much rather be out "front and center" but if things happen, just remember, I'll always be back there and will respond to your questions, e-mails, etc. ("when I feel like it - because its all about ME ME ME")

As for the questions about "where does my new job leave us," well, as far as I'm concerned we're still going to be able to e-mail, talk on occasion, and send packages back and forth. If I find out that something was sent and wasn't received, then there will be hell to pay for it, especially if it doesn't show up within a reasonable length of time. We'll be able to talk from time to time as well, just like we do now. I don't expect anything to change. (that last line is VERY TELLING)

But, be prepared that when I get deployed there may be long periods of time when you won't hear from me. I don't know what the e-mail situation will be from wherever I could end up. I think I explained to you that I could go to Baghdad or Afghanistan for as long as four months every two years. It's all part of my job. But, I will let you know about anything that comes up well in advance. I think they've got a rotation schedule so I'll know well in advance when I'm going and to where. It will be just like when I go out to the Yukon now and can't plug my computer into a spruce tree to send e-mails. (this is such a load of sympathy provoking B.S. we won't even bother to try to dissect it because its too funny the way it is)

The three trips I mentioned that I have coming up over the next two months before I head south are next week (beginning tomorrow morning) to Anchorage. I'll be checking my e-mail from there. Then the week after, I'll leave on Friday to fly out to Eagle, take a boat down the Yukon on Saturday to Coal Creek for a "dedication" on Sunday, back to Eagle on Monday via boat, and then spend Tuesday in Eagle doing research (actually I plan on relaxing and enjoying some time on the river -- very little work related) and fly back to Fairbanks on Wednesday. (Mr. Popular aren't you Beckstead?)

Then, the last trip will begin on August XXth (or sooner if they finish the first half of their mission first) I will be going out to the B-24 with the team from JPAC to recover the remains of the pilot. I got word today that I will be accompanying the team for the mission. I'm really psyched about that. The mission plans are to be onsite for two weeks (until September XXth). I think we'll find what we're looking for a lot sooner and might be out earlier than planned, but who knows what may happen. So, that will be the end of my "bush time" with the NPS. (and yet another project I can attach my name to so it will be more attention for DOUG BECKSTEAD - MR. WONDERFUL!)

Well, my back is really sore tonight. I think I should close this epistle and go stretch out on the couch for a while. (LOL!!! What a picture!!) I'm hoping to get up really early tomorrow and heading south.

There is also a big gun show going on in Anchorage this weekend that I would like to go see. It's where a lot of people are selling guns, parts of guns, accessories for guns, and other outdoor related things. I'll bet **** would have a blast at it! There is one up here in Fairbanks twice a year, but for the most part, there isn't much to it and everyone has things overpriced by at least 50%. I like to go to pick up an occasional accessory (ammo boxes, etc) but I rarely buy anything. I've seen a couple of guns that I would have liked to have picked up (bought) but didn't have the money at the time. Mostly I go to look to see if something strikes my fancy. (guns? no comment...!)

love and hugs! (notice how its no longer "I love you" - its more impersonal... did yours do this to you readers?)

Doug
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dolor temporarius.
Gloria aeterna.
Cicatrices virginibus placent.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

From: "Doug Beckstead"
Subject: Tonight
Date: Sun, 24 Sep 2006 20:34:05 -0800

Hi!

Well, this birthday/going away party really s*cked the big one. I got to XXX and there was virtually no one there. Tthe bartender who usually works on Sundays was sitting at the bar and someone else was working for her. She's the one who supposedly put the whole "party" together. She said that something came up and everything got changed. She left within an hour of my getting there. (oops Doug - now you see how very 'important' you aren't! LOL)

So, I sat there at the bar and got drunk. Well, almost. I have a bottle of Shiraz wine in the fridge that I plan on eliminating tonight. That's after I have my dinner of a can of chili heated in the microwave instead of the barbequed ribs that we were supposed to have. Yeah, I'll get drunk sitting in my little apartment, all by myself. Some birthday and going away, eh? (boo hoo... karma can be bad when you have inflicted emotional pain and psychological torture on others)

Friends, eh? Yup, you can always count on them. (just look in the mirror, Beckstead and see what a FRIEND you have been... not)

I hope you and ********* had a good time shopping and doing your "girlie stuff." (giving her GUILT!! oh he's really sickening...)

Love and hugs!

Doug
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dolor temporarius.
Gloria aeterna.
Cicatrices virginibus placent.

By now it was all about Beckstead 'normalizing his abuse.' The covert 'game over' 'I have had my fun with you, but surely you must realize that we have "become too close." (how about "I got bored and found new prey") He even said on one forum about all his Targets that: "this was just a game after-all" (AFTER THE FACT & WHAT HE'D DONE TO ME AND MY FAMILY). Beckstead dropped this bomb-shell, but expected us all to be just "friends".

His later emails would concern stories of dinner with the family - normal family, husband and wife stuff - let the good times roll. A complete turn around leaving each of us dumbfounded. Remember this was the "ill wife", the "down-trodden, frumpy, non-sexual wife", who NEVER EVEN existed back in the beginning. And the family he swore "did not care about him." Now it was all rosy and normal. (This is as cruel and heartless as it gets - after they malign the family/ wife/ partner to you - say you are their "one & only" and then it's family time for them and you are dumped like trash. And if you say 'ouch' they are all over you for HURTING them or their family. Truly depraved Beckstead. They want to use you like some free online porn girl then send you pictures of the wife and kids. WTF?! )

HERE'S THE BOOK THAT BECKSTEAD SENT AS A "PERSONAL GIFT" TO ALL HIS TARGETS

A PREDATOR IN REVIEW - DOUGLAS BECKSTEAD

BECKSTEAD'S VICTIMS HAVE SENT US SO MANY UPDATES ON HIM IN THE LAST FEW YEARS - WE FELT HE WAS WORTH ANOTHER LOOK. OF COURSE, NOTHING HAS CHANGED WITH HIS NARCISSISTIC PREDATORY WAYS!
(original posting: April 2007. As always, EOPC's comments in Dark Blue)

Full Name: Douglas Stephen Beckstead
Goes by: Doug Beckstead or Douglas Beckstead
Age: 51, now in his 52nd year.
Location: Anchorage, Alaska .... though he travels both nationally and internationally.
Employed by : Elmendorf Air Force Base, Alaska as a civilian Historian.

Doug Beckstead or Douglas Beckstead for his business liaisons, is also commonly known by his preferred internet handle of: Dog_Driver.

Dog_Driver is Doug's preferred handle used in chatrooms, forums and message boards, where he brags profoundly, inflates the facts and "blurs the lines" between fiction and reality. (pathological lying)

Other Known Internet Nicknames:
'Grizzly Adams'
'Road Runner'
'Louis XIV'

Sometimes uses a lowercase version of dog_driver and sometimes omits
the underscore. There are likely more.

From Classmates.com (he would not be the first cyberpath to use a reunion site to find prey - Dunetz/ YidwithLid did this with his Target #1):

Beckstead's Junior High

Beckstead's High School

Beckstead is currently living in Anchorage, Alaska, has been full time since the end of September 2006. He has lived in Alaska for some years now, alternating between Anchorage and Fairbanks. He told his targets that he lived there alone, whilst in Fairbanks, Alaska - never mentioning he was married and had two children until he decided it was time.

Once he mentioned his wife he claimed to be very unhappy, stating clearly that the marriage was loveless and sexless. (sound familiar readers? probably suffering from Madonna-Whore Complex) This story would also alter considerably once he had taken all he could from you both sexually and financially, and when your questions and suspicions about his bizarre, pathological mood-swings started to "bug him."

Doug Beckstead appears to be a cruel, cunning and manipulative psychopath who is very adapt at using projection, guilt, cognitive dissonance, brainwashing mixed with word salad to get his way. He, like all cheaters & Cyberpaths will lie and try to discredit his victims. He will say whatever it takes to make sure everyone buys into his version.

Beckstead originally moved to Alaska from Utah many years ago. Receiving his masters degree in Utah. Has also lived in Souderton, Philadelphia as a child. He has moved around over the years. He used to work for the National Parks Service (U.S.) and now is employed by the Elmendorf Air Force Base in Alaska as a civilian historian.

Doug Beckstead admits he is the product of an alcoholic mother and a serial cheating and marrying father. From what a few of his victims reported to us, he seems to have serious mother issues. A perfect breeding ground for Destructive Narcissism.

Beckstead relies on his tales of adventure and glory hunting to capture your interest. He will profile you and mirror your likes and dislikes, even appear to be helpful in the beginning. Once he has you hooked he will then ensnare you with stories of his lifetime of woe. (Sympathy ploy)

He likes his victims younger than him, preferably married with young children (like many cyberpaths) encountering emotional and marital difficulties, perhaps separated or divorced. He does this to make sure nothing could possibly ever be "real" between he & his targets - while we have seen he tells them quite the opposite. Promises visits, trips, meetings, etc. He will pretend to care, when nothing could be further from the truth.

Beckstead will tell you about "other women having been after him" (to paint himself as an object of desire). He will, when questioned later, falsely label these women and in some cases their children by telling dreadful untruths where they are concerned. He will invent an illness or a mental condition they supposedly 'have' and in some cases make up a traumatic event that happened to those he targets to "explain that they are sick in the head" (crazy, scorned, obsessed stalker... sound familiar again, readers??) and label himself as their victim. Beware as this is all a cleverly concocted lie to ensure he gains your sympathy. His recent victims all know because he turned the tables on them in exactly the same manner.

Doug Beckstead has changed personal details, deleted original information readily available on the internet that he had placed there himself, all to try and discredit his victims. (Capers, Dunetz, Jacoby, Hicks... all of them do this same stuff!)

He has lied to Air Force personnel and has lied to his wife and family. He has lied to his "old school friends." Beckstead's sole mission is to make himself look like the victim, the good guy, when he on the internet he is anything but.

Beckstead used to travel back and forth from Fairbanks, Alaska to Anchorage on a regular basis. Now living back in Anchorage, supposedly to spend time with his adult children. But obviously to see his wife as all his victims as we soon discovered.

The one online nickname we knew him by was 'Dog_Driver'. He was caught in the act "cybering" -- acting very lude in the 'Virtual Irish Pub' chat-room, under another guise ... 'Grizzly Adams' in 2006. He admitted that it was him, excusing it by saying "he had been drinking". Although his story as to what he was really doing was somewhat different. (Usually very twisted and minimized)

Still he believed that sexually seducing women he had never met online and arranging to meet & take them out to dinner and drinks etc was ok. But we know what was on the screen and none of it was acceptable. (tried to gaslight this victims? typical: "you didn't see what you DID see")

He originally met one of his intended targets in 2001, both were paid members of the 'Virtual Irish Pub' (a chatroom - his preferred hunting grounds at the time). He charmed his way into his target's lives with stories of adventure in the Alaskan wilderness. He asked to swap email addresses and insisted that his victims sign his guest book of the his deleted website named "Dog_Driver's Musing's." After a while he encouraged his victims to stop frequenting the "VIP" -- or so he has you believe. He probably wanted his targets off the VIP so he could prey on more while manipulating them in isolation. Beckstead then encouraged them to "meet up" every day and talk on MSN, ICQ and he expected email several times every day. He insists that he calls you on the telephone, in the beginning.

He professed to be "in love" with at least one target, stating that he was "not romantically or sexually interested in anyone else" -- only her. Until the excuses (from him) stepped up, then it's open season from his point of view; on any of his used up targets once he gets bored or feels you're asking too many questions. (DEVALUE & DISCARD)

He would constantly be looking for some disagreement with his targets once he was ready to dump them and found new targets. She could not win. He just gave her excuse after excuse. Yes, there was the odd nice time, but they became less and less as did the phone calls. (he got bored and was in discard mode - he probably had a new target in sight)

It was soon discovered that Beckstead made an ongoing habit of this type of predatory behavior.

Googling his name will display some of his more recent hunting grounds. Again he uses these forums & message boards to beef up his good guy image. They are nothing more than a lure for future targets and an attempt to repair the damage he did TO HIS REPUTATION - HIMSELF.

His wife Carol is finally keeping a MUCH closer eye on him via 'Facebook'. Although Beckstead may still manage to deceive her in the same way she has become accustomed. (Remember Dunetz/Yidwithlid said he bought his wife a computer so she could check up on him? These guys can just create a new identity with new email!! How about getting some Monitoring software and putting it on their computers WITHOUT THEM KNOWING -- wives??)

Beckstead was quite friendly with a lady in Fairbanks by the name of Roberta (a grandmother). He told one victim a story once, about how she had offered him no strings sex, he turned her down because "she was much older than him and quite a large lady". (He was probably already sleeping with her - typical psychological torture of a target. Talk about other women (or hookers). (Dunetz, Jacoby, Gash and Dorsky all did this. It's also part of the LURES - to make them seem 'very desirable' to other women while putting a knife in your - the target's heart. It's a HUGE red flag - that they see online women as SEX OBJECTS only - everything else is just head games for them! They actually enjoy hurting you.)

Later, Doug forgot about that "story" and sent a picture of the both of he & this Roberta and some members of her family whilst out on a river cruise in Fairbanks. She was not 20 years older than him, as he had once told his target -- and far from "large", as he implied. He told many lies, constantly forgot what he said and tripped himself up. When refreshing his memory, he failed to reply to any email questioning him. (oh of COURSE!! Never happened!! oooops! Compulsive liar = sociopath)

If he has another extramarital romantic interest they would be secured to MSN and his email, cell phone and more recently his 'Facebook' account. He apparently did meet someone local in Fairbanks, because after a certain amount of time as he was always "busy," too busy. He always had time before and when his personal circumstances had changed, work wise etc, back to the one job, he became even busier. (Like Dunetz, remember? As soon as his Target #1s abusive husband found out and he went back to work... he was TOO BUSY. Yes - too busy now that he could afford high price hookers. Beckstead either had an in-person liaison or other online targets going.)

Further investigations via an Air Force Special Agent later revealed that his wife Carol had also reappeared on the scene in Fairbanks for a short while, prior to his final move back to Anchorage. This was unknown to his targets at the time of Beckstead's newfound & endless busy-ness.

Beckstead purposely failed to let one target know about dropping his second part-time job for quite some time (because it was a good excuse for him to spend time with his other prey). It slipped out one night in conversation. He was always fixing things for this lady in town or that lady, or some new neighbor. (Why tell her unless it was to make himself look 'gallant' and to torture her mentally? As we said - part of the LURE to make himself look "wanted" & "desireable" - again part of the LURES!) Then they would offer him 'dinner'.

There was also the "I am house sitting" excuse too. At someone's house where he "could not reply to his emails" or "would not be taking his computer". Or he "was having computer problems". Again, all plausable excuses had they not been used so many times. And all this time he was still professing his being very much IN LOVE with his target. Beckstead cruelly and deliberately lead them all on, stringing them along with his sick and twisted game plan. (sounds like Jacoby and Capers!)

His targets were expected to continue on writing, not question him and to send him things. (Double standard. Typical Cyberpath. Demanding worship while giving none)

More updates as we continue!

Federal Charges for Scammer Nailed by Dateline

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

A federal grand jury in Greenville, South Carolina indicted Kenneth Ojua (a/k/a Diplomat “Jeffrey Grant”) – along with “Barrister Adewale Davis” and 4 other alleged co-conspirators in an international internet fraud ring.

Ojua was arraigned in Greenville and federal Magistrate William Catoe ordered him held without bond pending additional hearings.

On May 2, 2010, Dateline told the story of a Connecticut woman who had been cheated out of her life savings by internet scammers. Dateline’s Chris Hansen launched a year-long investigation aimed at luring some of her scammers out of the shadows. Dateline’s investigation finally paid off when Hansen met face-to-face with Ojua in a Greenville hotel room.

During the meeting Ojua tried to collect $37,600 dollars to pay storage fees for a trunk supposedly held in an underground vault and containing the woman’s multi-million dollar inheritance. The meeting was documented by Dateline’s hidden cameras.

Ojua was arrested by Greenville city police shortly after the meeting — but denied any wrongdoing. The U.S. Secret Service then launched its own investigation.

Federal agents are still attempting to identify and locate the conspirators overseas.

read the whole article here

Australian Lured to Her Death on Facebook

By Richard Shears

An Australian teenager was allegedly lured to her death by a man she met on Facebook after he offered her a fake job protecting wildlife.

Nona Belomesoff, 18, was found dead in a creek south west of Sydney after going to meet a Facebook 'friend'.

Christopher Dannewig, 20, allegedly set up a bogus profile to pose as an animal rescue worker and enticed his victim to the isolated spot.

Nona, who is described as a animal lover, was told she first had to go on an overnight camping trip that would be part of her initial training for the post.

Filled with excitement, she headed off to a railway station to meet 'Jason Green' - the fake identity allegedly set up by Dannewig.

The teenager told her family, who also believed the offer was genuine. Her body was found on Friday night after she failed to return home.

Dannewig, who also has profiles on My Space and Bebo, was charged with murder yesterday and was refused bail after appearing in court.

Homicide Squad detective inspector Russell Oxford warned about the dangers of Facebook and other social networking sites.

'It's an area where predators and perverts and other people just get onto. You just don't know who you could be talking to,' he said.

'This young woman had a passion for animals and was led to believe the overnight camping trip would lead to a potential job with an animal welfare group,' Inspector Oxford said.

'She told her family and they thought it was a genuine training area she was going to. That was part of the story to encourage her to go out there.

'And it wasn't until later on that we found out there is no such training facility like that and the people aren't affiliated with that place, so it was a bogus ruse to get her out there.'

Nearly 30 police officers searched bushland before the teenager's body was found in the Campbelltown Creek, although her cause of death has not been revealed.

Inspector Oxford said: 'I have been doing this for a long time, but we're very upset. To go outside in the dark and find a young girl lying in the creek bed...'

Comments her accused killer, Christopher Dannevig, wrote on social networking sites hinted at a troubled life.

'Life is full of s*** sometimes,' he wrote earlier this month. In April he wrote that 'a broken heart will heal in time but some wounds won't'.

Nona Belomesoff's grief-stricken mother, Nina, said through her tears today: 'She was scared she was going to lose the job she really likes, so she went - and never came back.'

Her brother Gary, warning young people not to trust strangers they meet over the internet, told Sydney's Channel Seven News: 'I can't believe such a human being would do this. It's so cold hearted.

'Be careful - you can't trust anybody over the internet.'

Dannevig, who appeared before Parramatta Court, west of Sydney, via a video link from prison at the weekend, has been remanded in custody and will appear in court again on Thursday.

original article here

Man Enlists Other Man Online to Rape His Wife

A man used the online advertising service Craigslist to enlist another man to rape his wife in the couple's home, police said Wednesday.

The 25-year-old North Carolina man faces first-degree rape and other charges. The press is not naming him to avoid identifying his wife, a victim of sexual assault.

His wife called police early Sunday morning and said a man with a knife raped her in the bedroom of their home in Kannapolis, about 25 miles northeast of Charlotte, authorities said. Her husband was in the room, police said. Their two young children were also home, but were unaware of what was happening, authorities said.

The husband sought someone in the ads to come to his home and have sex with his wife using "scare tactics," police said. It was without her knowledge or consent, police said.

Authorities are still investigating the identity of the man who attacked the woman and it wasn't known if the husband paid him to do it. The woman was not seriously injured, but was treated at a hospital and released.

Investigators turned their suspicions to the husband after his statement didn't add up and because there were no signs the attacker broke into the home. The husband was jailed Wednesday on $200,000 bond.

"We share the public's horror that such a crime was committed, and our heart goes out to the victim," said Craigslist spokeswoman Susan MacTavish Best.

The online classified site had been criticized for its "erotic services" section, which Craigslist agreed to do away with last month after a Boston medical student, deemed "the Craigslist killer," was charged with killing a woman he met on the site.

A Kansas City, Missouri, man was sentenced last month to 29 years in prison for raping a woman who advertised in the section.

SOURCE

Man Facing Cyberstalking Charges

by Corey Friedman

(TEXAS) A Dallas man accused of sending threatening e-mails to a woman was charged with cyberstalking on Wednesday.

Robert Steven Cygan, 44, allegedly wrote, “I got a pistol with your name wrote all over, and I ain’t afraid to use it on you,” in a March 17 e-mail to the complainant.

He continued sending e-mails and harassing the woman after she asked him to leave her alone, according to an arrest warrant affidavit.

Cygan was released on a written promise to appear in court and ordered to “initiate no contact whatsoever” with the complainant until the case is resolved.

Peter Berry: Romeo Rogue & Internet Seducer

By Angela Levin

Sara Terry claims she wasn’t really looking for someone to love when she agreed to her friends’ suggestions to try internet dating.

But when an email landed in her inbox from a man who seemed to be her mirror image, she admits her pulse began to race.

They had a similar view of life, enjoyed the same sports and both were dog owners with much-loved Labradors.

So it was no surprise that, when she met Peter Berry a few weeks later, his charm, wit, impeccable manners and soft green-blue eyes melted her heart.

What’s more, the feeling seemed mutual. ‘Wow!’ he texted her straight after they parted. ‘I cannot believe we have so much in common.’

Within a couple of weeks he had proposed marriage and moved in. ‘I felt I had met the right man,’ she says. ‘He was so warm and funny.’

Today, eight months later, she is alone, a stone lighter and £35,000 the poorer, a victim of one of the most prolific fraudsters ever to be dragged before the British courts.

For 20 years Peter Berry has made a specialty of preying on single women in their 30s and 40s.

Using newspaper adverts and internet dating
sites he seduced then fleeced them.

The total amount of money he has stolen is incalculable, much like the scale of emotional damage he has wreaked.

No one knows how many women he has conned, either, but the victims probably number in the hundreds.

So peculiarly unpleasant is his style of operation that most of them remained silent out of embarrassment.

He took £35,000 from his first wife and left his second, the mother of his child, bankrupt. She is now in hiding to avoid contact with his family.

Berry has helped himself to five-figure sums from fiancees in America and girlfriends in Europe, including £28,000 from a girlfriend in Tayside.

He has even taken £100,000 from his mother. Nothing, it seemed, could stop him, as he moved from city to city, country to country in search of fresh victims – until, that is, Sara Terry decided to take him on.

With the help of the police in Cornwall, she mounted a dogged pursuit of a man who also uses the names John Keady, Taz Keady and even sometimes calls himself ‘doctor’.

Last month, he appeared at Truro Crown Court pleading guilty to eight counts of deception and fraud involving eight separate victims, including Sara.

The investigating officers believe this is just the tip of the iceberg.

‘There could be hundreds more victims,’ says Detective Constable Derek Farrow, who led the case against Berry.

‘Many, who are high-powered lawyers, GPs, fund managers, senior civil servants and businesswomen, haven’t wanted to press charges in case it affected their careers.

‘I believe that Berry is an accomplished, cold and calculating villain who could easily have taken more than £1million.

‘He is just brilliant at gaining people’s confidence and creating an image of a successful, affluent man.’

So brilliant, in fact, that he even persuaded someone like Sara. An articulate and attractive 42-year-old divorcee, she would not seem an obvious ‘victim’.

Like many women of her age, though, she is fully occupied. She looks after her young children on the South Coast and works in a chandler’s.

So, like countless others, she found it easier to click on a dating website at a time which suited rather than attempt to meet suitable men in crowded bars or clubs.

This is how she found herself on a website called Fitness Singles in October 2008.

‘I love challenging sports and thought I would meet a more genuine person than someone who just wanted a date or two,’ she says with a rueful smile.

‘I didn’t upload any photographs on my profile but said I enjoyed sailing, horse riding and had a dog.

'Pete emailed that he was 40 – he was actually three years older – a very successful business consultant and interested in the same sports as me.

'He even had a photograph of him sailing on his profile.’

After weeks of increasingly chatty emails, Sara agreed on a date at nearby Langstone Harbour, along the coast from Portsmouth.

Physically he was no Casanova. ‘He was 6ft 2in, weighed about 20 stone and looked like the cartoon character Shrek,’ she says.

‘But he had such warm eyes, we had so much to talk about, he was so interested in me that, to my surprise, I found him very attractive.

‘He was attentive, flattering and very funny, which are all the qualities a woman likes.’

A second meeting, a walk on a beach with their two Labradors, went even better and on the third date he asked if he could come to her home, a detached property in a picturesque Hampshire village.

He also told her that although he was in Cornwall looking after his widowed mother, he was planning to relocate to Hampshire to be closer to London and his work.

‘I agreed because the children were spending the day with their father,’ she says.

‘Then, late in the afternoon, he told me he was asthmatic and having trouble breathing.

‘He said that he didn’t have very good lungs because he had fallen out of boats so many times and that if he went to hospital he knew from experience they would keep him in for at least a week, which would wreck a business deal.

'Nor was he well enough to drive five hours to Cornwall. He even started crying as he said “please don’t make me go”.’

She shrugs. ‘I agreed he could stay and for the next five days he had me running around after him. We shared a bed, but didn’t have sex.

'He also said he wanted to marry me and I felt really excited. We had so many common interests, I felt I had met the right man.’

Why did this remarkable turn of events fail to ring alarm bells? She has no ready answer, although it is possible that, in her heart, she really wanted to settle down, and shut her eyes to the danger signs.

'He also said he wanted to marry me and I felt really excited.’

She continues: ‘He then left for Cornwall but returned a few days later and just moved in. I didn’t question it because he overwhelmed me by organising one activity after another.

'I wasn’t working at the time and he said he was enjoying a break after several successful business deals so we spent lots of time sailing.

‘He taught me how to kayak, which I loved. He also said he wanted to buy a house for us and we went round looking at several £3million-plus properties.

'I admit that I was smitten and quite overcome.’

It was during this time that she slept with him. But shortly afterwards he began giving her mixed messages.

‘On the one hand he was tactile, but then told me he had a low sex drive and kept making excuses for us not to be physically together.

'He talked about his strong Catholic background, which I later discovered had been exaggerated, and also claimed his eczema was playing up and that it was painful to touch me.

'I didn’t like to make a fuss as there are more important things than sex, but I was also concerned as I didn’t want a non-physical relationship.

‘He began going out in the evening. He told me he was attending business meetings but I later discovered he was seeing other women.’

Just before Christmas 2008, she took her children on a family holiday with her former husband, a property developer, but agreed that Berry could stay in the house. Worse still, she lent him her credit card.

‘I had asked him several times what he wanted as a Christmas present but it was only late on Christmas Eve that he finally suggested a kayak.

I thought it was a brilliant idea but as I didn’t have time to sort one out suggested he did the research and put the cost on my credit card.’

Not only did he buy a kayak he also took out an annual subscription to Zoosk, another online dating site.

‘He also managed to work out details of my two bank accounts,’ she says.

‘He phoned the bank while I was away, pretending to be me, and put up my credit limit.

Because I use direct debit as much as possible I wasn’t in the habit of checking my bank statements, something I now realise was quite wrong.’

'I know not to sign something you don’t read but we were engaged and living together so I did.'

On her return, he became more daring, claiming he wanted to take her on an adventure holiday for her birthday.

‘He said I had to sign a personal liability disclaimer for the travel company but wouldn’t show me the details as he wanted to keep the destination secret.

'I know not to sign something you don’t read but we were engaged and living together so I did.

'I later discovered it was a loan application to the bank for £15,000.’ She is currently paying it off at £400 a month for 47 months.

In mid-April, her purse and credit cards went missing and she at last became suspicious.

On impulse she rang to check the balance on her current accounts and credit cards.

‘I was told that each of my two bank accounts was about £1,000 overdrawn and that I owed about £9,000 on my credit cards.

I felt my whole life had stopped. I immediately cancelled the cards and when the bank employee said, “What about the loan?” I replied, “What loan?” When they told me I could hardly speak.

'All I could think of was how was I going to feed my children. I then rang Berry who gave me a long explanation of a business deal that went wrong and how he would pay me back handsomely “any moment now”.

'I felt such a fool and for the next two months stayed at home feeling depressed and ill.

‘I gave him time because I thought if I kicked him out straight away I would have no chance of getting my money back. By mid-June I’d had enough.’

She then did what so few of his victims had dared to do before, and complained to the police.

‘I told them what had happened and arranged to call 999 when he next showed up,’ says Sara.

‘When he did, they came to arrest him and all he said when they marched him off was to ask me to look after his dog. I haven’t seen him since.’

She then did some investigation of her own. ‘I got in touch with the people who had been with us on kayaking trips and all the friends on his Facebook account, and told them about what had happened.

Men and women came back to me and I discovered that at least three women were involved with him at the same time as me and had also lost money.’

He had, for example, taken nearly £15,000 from Mabel Arnhill, a 32-year-old businesswoman and member of his kayaking club.

Berry called himself Dr Teady and, promising to buy her a kayak, got her credit card details and emptied the account.

Sara found herself working alongside Detective Constable Derek Farrow in Saltash near Plymouth and it is thanks to his research and Sara’s bravery that Berry has finally been convicted.

Up until 2008 a few women had reported him to their local police.

But the complaints were treated as isolated incidents and, with Berry moving around, nothing was done – as Lynne Martin, Berry’s former girlfriend from Tayside, knows only too well.

She reported him after losing the best part of £30,000, but got nowhere.

Lynne, now 40, says: ‘He was a real seducer. He’s very good at it. But I think career women are more vulnerable.

'When men put a lot into their work and don’t have partners or children they are admired, whereas women feel under pressure to have it all and get anxious about finding a partner while they are of child-bearing age.

'If you say you are interested in something he, chameleon-like, says he is too.

‘I reported him to the police but here in Scotland they said it was a civil matter and took no interest.

'I took out a private prosecution which I won, but I haven’t been able to get my money back.

'I felt so awful that initially I was suicidal and lost all my trust in people. It has taken me a long time to recover, but I have finally found someone I believe I can rely on.’

Between 2008 and April of this year DC Farrow has been tracking Berry’s victims all round the world.

He has spoken to Berry’s sister – who has disowned him – and Berry’s mother, herself a victim of his fraud.

Much about Berry remains unfathomable, such as how he has spent the vast sums he defrauded, what has driven him to destroy the lives of those around him, or why it is women he chooses to humiliate.

No one from Berry’s family was willing to comment. But close family friends are mystified by his behaviour.

His upbringing is understood to have been warm and loving. Berry was born in Callington, Cornwall, and at six months was adopted by a naval medic and his wife.

On leaving school at 16 he got a job in the naval dockyards in Plymouth. But that was a brief stay, and he has never been able to hold down a regular job since.

There may be some light shed on this question when he is back in the dock for sentencing in two weeks’ time.

Berry might well be jailed, but it is unlikely to be a long sentence.

Although still suffering from anxiety, Sara seems to be recovering.

‘At first I was very cross with myself but I have fought against becoming bitter and untrusting,’ she says.

‘I admit I was naive, but there isn’t a law against that. He, not me, should feel embarrassed about what he has done.’

Although, she feels, there is little chance of that.

ORIGINAL ARTICLE HERE

ONLINE "COLONEL" SEEMED LIKE A CATCH!

STAY AWAY FROM ONLINE DATING! - EOPC
Con artist uses Marine’s identity to scam women
By Kimberly Johnson

Wendy McKay thought she had met someone special when the Marine colonel deployed to Iraq started chatting with her on the online dating Web site.

Someone claiming to be Col. Richard Bartch told her he was in Iraq for the first time after volunteering for duty. And like her, he was divorced. Chats quickly led to e-mails and within a day he sent her photos of himself in uniform.

In one, he stood in his woodland digital-patterned utilities, proudly holding up his Bronze Star citation and medal. In another, he’s lounging in desert cammies in a chair, with his service pistol holster pulled taut across his broad shoulders just next to his name tape.

His e-mails were romantic, echoing the sentiment of a schmaltzy Hallmark greeting card:

“I went to sleep last night with a smile because I knew I’d be dreaming of you ... but I woke up this morning with a smile because you weren’t a dream,” he wrote to the 52-year-old British woman Oct. 21, just one day after they made introductions online. “Though miles may lie between us, we’re never far apart, for friendship doesn’t count the miles, it’s measured by the heart.”

The e-mails quickly picked up intensity.

“[T]he feeling is getting stronger and stronger,” he wrote the next day, Oct 22. “... think it will not be hard to LOVE you huh!”

By Oct. 23, his e-mails reflected he was sure it was love.

“You awakened a part of me that had lay [sic] dormant all of life. [A]lthough [I] had loved and been loved before, never had it been so intense and so deep as what we feel for each other. [T]his much [I] am sure of, we share a love so true that [I] have never before experienced the true joy of complete empowering, soul-felt love as we share,” he said.

McKay almost bought it. That is, until she realized doing so was really going to cost her.

Bartch — or more accurately, the con artist who had stolen the identity of the real Marine officer, from a family-oriented military Web site — wanted her to send him $5,000.
Red flags

On Oct. 20, McKay logged onto a U.K.-based dating Web site, “when I was contacted by a person who seemed to like me and we started to chat,” she said in an e-mail, explaining the initial encounter. At the man’s request, she gave him her e-mail address so they could exchange pictures.

“He sent me [four] photos and he told me he was called Colonel Richard O. Bartch and was a retired USA Marine,” she said in her e-mail to Marine Corps Times. “These pictures were of himself and some of his family when he returned from Iraq and another one was of one of his sons who is also a Marine.”

The photo exchange gave way to a feverish wave of online chats. Some of the photos were older and predated his divorce, he told her, in an effort to explain away the wedding ring he was wearing in some of the shots.

He had three sons, the fake colonel said. Two were natural born, but the middle child — Albert — was adopted after his mother, a Spanish neighbor who lived down the street, died suddenly when he was nine years old.

“The story was so intricate,” she said, in a phone interview from Peterborough, England.

The fake colonel was having trouble contacting Albert and was concerned about him, he told McKay, explaining that a military security regulation prevented him from making or receiving calls from Iraq. He asked her to call Albert on his behalf to check on his welfare, and gave her a phone number with an area code for Atlanta, which he said was his hometown.

McKay called.

Recalling the brief conversation, she said the young man who answered the phone had a thick foreign accent — presumably to corroborate the story of a Spanish mother. He sounded as if he was in his early 20s, she said. In hindsight, McKay now believes he was the scammer himself.

“I think he wanted to see how I’d fallen for it,” she said.

There were other red flags, from the beginning, McKay noted, such as mistakes in grammar and military references. In an early e-mail explaining photos of his sons, Bartch wrote: “Nathan and her mum welcomed me when [I] went back to the states ... and that’s me with the bronze reward.”

Other clues were more subtle. During a chat session, she sensed he was carrying on more than one conversation at the same time. Another time, he told her he had to go out into the field, but asked her to wait. He was only away from his computer for a short time before he returned. To McKay, who once was married to a man in the Royal Air Force, the brevity of his trip “to the field” seemed curious.

On Oct. 30, however, he confided in her that he needed her help urgently. He was in the process of packing up to leave Iraq, but somehow his bag had been intercepted in Ghana. His “diplomatic tag” had run out; he couldn’t pay to renew it while in Iraq and needed £2,500, about $5,000, she said.

“The minute he said that, I logged off,” she said, realizing it was a scam.

“He asked for the money in pounds,” and not in American currency, she said. “He said ‘I’ll pay you back when I come and see you.’”

Seeing red
McKay is not the only woman the faker tried to dupe, but she wants to be the last. She gave copies of the e-mails and the Atlanta telephone number to U.S. military police based in the U.K. and sent a letter to the Marine Corps.

“I wanted [Bartch] to know that someone is impersonating him, and how easy it is,” McKay said.

The photos of the real Col. Richard Bartch are believed to have been copied from the Web site MarineCorpsMoms.com, said the site’s founder, Deborah Conrad. It’s a Web site focused on family morale during military deployments.

Attempts to reach the fake colonel for comment, using both his e-mail address and the Atlanta-area telephone number, went unanswered.

“He has posted under this identity on at least four different dating sites that I am aware of,” said Conrad, who launched MarineCorpsMoms.com in 2004, when a friend deployed to Iraq for the second time.

“I first learned of this a few months back when a woman contacted me to let me know that she had been corresponding with a man she met through an online dating service and had become suspicious when he told her he had a son who was a [sergeant] in the Navy,” Conrad said in an e-mail. “[Whoever] it is, he doesn’t do a very good job of military customs and courtesies.”

The original photos of the real Bartch were given to Conrad for the Web site by his wife, Mary Helen Bartch, when he was deployed to Iraq in 2004, Conrad said. The recent misuse of Bartch’s photos is the only instance Conrad’s aware of where material found on her Web site has been used for a scam, she said in a phone interview.

“I don’t know of any way to stop things like this from happening, other than to never post anything to the Web,” she said.

“One of the things I want my Web site to do is share the successes of wonderful things Marines are doing around the world,” Conrad said. Adding layers of protection, such as locking the personal photos to prevent copying, wasn’t something she had thought she would need to consider.

The whole point of the site is to share, she explained. Some Marine families, for example, have seen photos of their loved ones on deployment for the first time on her site, she added.
Tall tales
The real colonel has heard several of the wild stories, the adventures concocted in his name that also lured in women from Denmark and the state of Georgia.

“Supposedly I had saved a diplomat,” and there was a suitcase with $5 million in reward money waiting for pickup somewhere in Africa, Bartch said in a telephone interview. One woman was preparing to travel to Africa to pick up the money, Bartch said. The impostor told another that his son had been injured, prompting mounting medical bills, and that the impostor needed money for travel expenses.

“It’s a pure Nigerian scam, and unfortunately I got involved with my name in it,” Bartch said.

Marine Corps officials notified Bartch, who they say is listed as being in the Individual Ready Reserve and living in Spokane, Wash., who then notified his banks and law enforcement officials, including the FBI, as a precaution.

The nature of the identity theft — only a name, and a handful of personal photos — limited his options.

“No one can do anything about it. Just because the guy’s using my name, there’s not any real recourse,” Bartch said. “It is a violation, but it’s not like being broken into.”

After word of the scam emerged, Conrad removed Bartch’s photos from the site and things have quieted down.

“I would like to see it dropped,” he said.

Liar, liar
While Marine impersonators are not new, the case highlights a unique area where the persona — and not the personal information, such a Social Security number — of a real person was used in the attempt to scam money.

Hard statistics about online fraud remain vague, but online digital identity theft is on the rise, said Marsali Hancock, president of the Arlington, Va.-based Internet Keep Safe Coalition.

There are simple ways to help guard against online identity theft, she said. Don’t post a person’s name below photos. Use privacy settings on social networking sites, such as MySpace and Facebook.

“The Internet is forever,” Hancock said. “Whatever you post, you can never fully remove. Once you put your picture up [on the Internet], it’s up there and you lose control over it.”

Internet postings pose potential risk for those in the military, she added.

“It seems like military officers could be at risk because the information they share with their families might not be information that they’d want to share with the world,” she said. “It puts their family at risk,” as well as themselves, she said.

That’s not to say military morale Web sites and blogs should go silent — they should just try to be a little more savvy, she explained. “They can share good news without sharing specific names,” Hancock said.

McKay said she has learned a valuable lesson, but admitted the incident has been a setback. The divorcee of six years said she had only resumed dating within the last couple of years.

“Women are on that [dating] site because they’re looking for a partner, they’re looking for a relationship,” McKay said. “[Scammers] think women on there are divorced, got a good settlement off their husbands and have got money to play with.”

She is no longer using the online dating site.

“I’m very, very wary,” McKay said. “I don’t know if I could trust them again.”

SOURCE

OTHER MILITARY PHONIES WE HAVE COVERED:
Phil Haberman
Nathan Ernest Burl Thomas, Jr.

Stalking & Googling Someone 40,000 Times = 16 Weeks in Jail

By Arthur Martin

An ‘obsessive’ TV producer who stalked a former classmate for more than seven years was jailed for just 16 weeks on Monday.

Elliot Fogel, 34, subjected Claire Waxman to an ‘unimaginable’ ordeal by following her, breaking into her car and making hundreds of late-night phone calls to her home.

A search of his computer revealed he had Googled his victim more than 40,000 times in one year. But despite a judge ruling that Fogel’s actions had caused ‘mental harm’ to his victim, a police source revealed that he could be free in as little as six weeks.

Mrs. Waxman, 34, a complementary therapist from North-West London, attacked the sentence as too short and called for tougher jail terms in stalking cases.

‘I will get a couple of months’ respite at best, but I am under no illusion that he will be out of jail soon and the harassment will start again,’ she said. ‘What we are looking at here is an obsessive person who is highly likely to reoffend.

'There is currently not an appropriate sentence for stalking. This obsession started 20 years ago and it’s not going to suddenly stop after a few weeks in jail.’

Wood Green Crown Court in North London heard how Fogel – a freelance producer at Sky Sports News and Capital Radio – first developed an unhealthy interest in Mrs Waxman while they were students at a college in St Albans, Hertfordshire.

She repeatedly told Fogel to leave her alone and, after leaving college in 1993, heard nothing more from him. However, ten years later, she received a dinner invitation from him, which she declined.

A few months later, in December 2003, Fogel, from Isleworth, West London, was spotted jogging on the spot outside her home and also began to spend increasing amounts of time hanging around her workplace.

Mrs Waxman told the court she felt ‘like a sitting duck’ as Fogel continued to follow her and make phone calls to her home.

After his arrest, a police search of his computer revealed he had also managed to get hold of Mrs Waxman’s wedding photographs and had a Google Earth aerial map of her home.

Further investigation found that he had paid for background searches to be carried out on Mrs Waxman’s husband Marc and her father, and that he had posed as a prospective parent at the nursery her daughter attended.

Jailing Fogel for 16 weeks after he admitted breaching a restraining order, Judge Fraser Morrison said:

‘Mrs Waxman wants some peace from you because you weren’t able to take the hint that any relationship you wanted with her was not going to take place.

‘You’re not an unintelligent man but you didn’t take the hint. She wants you out of her life.’

In a 16-page written impact statement to the court, Mrs Waxman described how she had suffered a miscarriage, developed an eating disorder, and had to move home five times as a result of her seven-year ordeal.

‘He has nothing in his life and all he chooses to do is pursue me and my family,’ she wrote. ‘Though there has been no physical harm, the mental harm of all these years is getting too heavy to bear.

‘My life has been ruined by this man in so many ways and yet no one can help us nor protect us.

'Instead of preventing something terrible from happening, I feel like we’re being left like sitting ducks waiting for something to happen.

‘He has said time and time again that he will leave me alone and yet never does. He still feels he is allowed to do what he wants because he has no moral compass.

‘He has no respect for me, my family, the law and I feel not even himself. Fogel is mentally unwell and has an obsession with me – he needs medical attention.’

Police have been unable to take tough action against Fogel because he has not made any physical threats to his victim. It means that officers have been able to use only anti-harassment laws to curb his campaign.

original article here

Warrantless Attempt to Read Yahoo E-mail Abandoned by D.O.J.

The U.S. Justice Department has abruptly abandoned what had become a high-profile court fight to read Yahoo users' e-mail messages without obtaining a search warrant first.

In a two-page brief filed Friday, the Obama administration withdrew its request for warrantless access to the complete contents of the Yahoo Mail accounts under investigation. CNET was the first to report on the Denver case in an article on Tuesday.

Yahoo's efforts to fend off federal prosecutors' broad request attracted allies--in the form of Google, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Center for Democracy and Technology, and the Progress and Freedom Foundation--who argued (PDF) that Americans who keep their e-mail in the cloud enjoy a reasonable expectation of privacy that is protected by the U.S. Constitution.

Two years ago, then-presidential candidate Barack Obama had pledged that, as president, he would "strengthen privacy protections for the digital age." This dispute had the potential to test his administration's actual commitment to privacy, which recently became the subject of a legislative push supported by Silicon Valley firms and privacy advocates. The administration has taken a position at odds with that coalition in a second case in Philadelphia involving warrantless tracking of cell phones.

Much of the information about the case in federal court in Colorado remains unclear, including the nature of the possible crime being investigated, how many e-mail accounts are at issue, and whether it was the flurry of publicity in the last few days or something else that prompted the U.S. Attorney's office in Denver to back down.

The brief filed Friday says that Yahoo had turned over more information since March 3 and that "the government has concluded that further production of records and information by Yahoo would not be helpful to the government's investigation."

On December 3, 2009, U.S. Magistrate Judge Craig Shaffer ordered Yahoo to hand over to prosecutors certain records, including the contents of e-mail messages. Yahoo divulged some of the data but refused to turn over e-mail that had been previously viewed, accessed, or downloaded and was less than 181 days old.

Neither Yahoo nor Assistant U.S. Attorney Pegeen Rhyne were immediately available for comment on Friday. A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's office in Denver sent CNET an e-mail message saying: "Because this involves an ongoing investigation, I respectfully decline comment, other than to say the brief filed today speaks for itself."

A 17-page brief that the Justice Department filed last month acknowledges that federal law requires search warrants for messages in "electronic storage" that are less than 181 days old. But, Rhyne had argued, the Yahoo Mail messages don't meet that definition.

"Previously opened e-mail is not in 'electronic storage,'" Rhyne had written. "This court should therefore require Yahoo to comply with the order and produce the specified communications in the targeted accounts." (The Justice Department says that what's known as a 2703(d) order--and is not as privacy-protective as the rules for search warrants--should let police read e-mail.)

A footnote to Friday's government brief says that the Justice Department "is aware that Yahoo and other various parties have now submitted briefs on various privacy issues in the context of the prior motion to compel. The government respectfully disagrees with positions taken in those briefs, but because the need for the motion to compel has been vitiated by Yahoo's further production, the government declines to litigate this matter in this moot context."

read entire original article here

Man Arrested for Exploiting Facebook to Find Woman

Cleveland County, North Carolina deputies have arrested a man for cyber-stalking a 38-year-old Kings Mountain woman.

Laurence Barnett, 40, is charged with the crime. Deputies say it appears the Marietta, Ga., man may have used information on Facebook.com to track the woman down at her church. She recognized him, saying Barnett repeatedly tried to contact her on the social networking site.

Deputies say internet users should be careful with the information they chose to make public online. On Facebook.com, a user can control their privacy settings to decide who can access their profile.

FROM THIS ARTICLE

Canadian man Arrested for Online Dating Fraud

EOPC NEVER NEVER NEVER agrees with online dating... ever... under any circumstances. Volunteer, join an interest group but STAY OFF THE DATING SITES!

by Zoe Fraley

A Canadian man suspected of running fraudulent dating Web sites was arrested as he tried to enter the U.S. at Point Roberts on Friday, March 26, the U.S. Department of Justice announced Monday.

Barrie Turner, 65, of Delta, B.C., is suspected of mail fraud in connection with the operation of more than 200 fraudulent dating Web sites linked to Executive Dating LLC.

A U.S. Postal Inspection Service investigation alleges that Turner was accepting payment from customers for the dating service - up to $1,000 for a six-month membership - but wasn't providing any legitimate matchmaking services.

More than 100 people have filed consumer complaints about the sites, which offer executive dating services, including such niches as Catholic dating, gay dating and Seattle dating. Customers complained that the people they were being matched with were fictitious after seeing repeat pictures of matches with different personal information, according to the DOJ. Clients interested in meeting their matches received identical e-mails telling them that the person they were interested in had decided to date someone else they had already met.

Fees for joining the dating service were sent to mailbox stores around the country and then forwarded to a mailbox in Point Roberts, where Turner was heading Friday. Investigators estimate that more than 1,000 customers sent Executive Dating more than $1.2 million since 2005.

Turner was charged in U.S. District Court in Seattle. Mail fraud is punishable by up to 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

original article here

Managing Your Online Reputation

Doug Beckstead and Jeff Dunetz are trying this to combat their exposures. - EOPC

by Antony Mayfield

The measure of your reputation is what you do plus what others say about you. That was one of the first things I learned in PR. A reputation can be managed, and can be influenced by the things we do, but it can never be designed or decided upon by its holder. Reputation is earned.

As the social web has distributed the power and influence formerly held by the mainstream media, it has created the need for personal reputation awareness. And despite being a long-time user of social media, I found I learned some new things as I navigated these waters for myself. Below are three tips that I found useful.

1. You Are Your Network
I had a call from a BBC researcher asking for background on social networks. The breaking story that day was that personal details and embarrassing photos of the newly appointed head of Britain’s foreign intelligence service, MI6, were splashed all over one newspaper. The source? His family’s Facebook profiles.

It made me think about my own family’s personal details and images. What if I became a story? What would a journalist find? My profile’s privacy settings were locked down, but sure enough, a few clicks showed that my wife’s was wide open.

It was a clear lesson: If you want to manage privacy, reputation, and your security to any extent, you have to think about those around you — especially those who are not as tech-savvy.

2. If You Can’t Delete, Compete
Although it’s a good idea to ask people to remove embarrassing content about you, in the majority of cases the best course is to make sure that you are the first and best source of information about yourself appearing on Google (Google) and other major search engines. “Crowding out,” or pushing that embarrassing party photo down in the search rank can be achieved over time. This approach is best combined with an ethos of developing a thicker skin.

The time may soon come when so much content about our lives is online that we get suspicious if we find no unpolished or slightly embarrassing bits about someone when we look. Why are they so perfect? What are they hiding?

Reputation is a messy and uneven business. Playing the content game is often preferable to an all out war — a battle you will most likely lose.

3. There’s a Cottage Industry Around “Reputation Protection”
In discussing online reputation with friends and colleagues, they predicted that there would be services that offer “the digital equivalent of tattoo removal.” While I didn’t doubt that there would be demand for this kind of thing, I wondered about how it would be realistically implemented.

There is, in fact, a small industry growing up to help people manage how their privacy is affected by the web. At the high end, rich and powerful celebrities now hire digital security specialists to help them lock down everything from their voicemail inbox, to their e-mail and Facebook accounts, and to look for the weak points where stalkers or prying journalists might try to get some juicy information.

For the rest of us, a host of services promise to safeguard your identity and reputation online — I even get one service free with my credit card. It tells me less than my Google Alerts, though, so I’m broadly skeptical about the effectiveness of services like this. At best, they should be combined with an effort to develop personal web literacy and an understanding of how to manage online reputation responsibly.

Conclusion
It is incredibly important that we help our friends, colleagues and families understand the social web. They make up our most valuable social networks. And when you understand networks, you understand that their success and well-being is intrinsically linked to your own.

As Howard Rheingold says, “What you know or don’t know about networks can influence how much freedom, wealth and participation you and your children will have in the rest of this century.”

It should be the goal of every web-savvy professional to have their online reputation precede them.

SOURCE

If Your Past Comes Calling....

If it hasn't already happened to you, someday it will: You'll pick up the phone or open an e-mail and suddenly get a blast from the past. Out of the blue, you'll hear from someone you used to know.

It might be a former classmate, hoping to see you at the next reunion. Or a colleague from a previous job who's passing through town. Or a teenage crush who looked you up on the Internet. Or an enemy seeking to make amends.

"It's a wonderful thing to do, to touch base with people, to see how people live their lives, to see how people lived out their dreams. You connect the present to the past," says Laurie Puhn, president of a professional and personal development training firm in New York.

Internet Web sites and search engines, such as classmates.com, Peoplefinders.com, Google and ZabaSearch, are making it easy to track down people from the past. The research can lead to reunions that reignite old friendships.

It also can lead to a world of trouble if, say, your nemesis is still holding a grudge. Or a long-lost buddy is looking to crash on your couch indefinitely. Or that "friend" is using you to dig up information on the ex they never got over. Or that now-married old flame wants to catch up with you, sans his or her spouse.

READ THE REST OF THIS ARTICLE HERE

Secret Facebook Romance Leads to Execution

Jealous ex-boyfriend executed mother and daughter, 4, after discovering Facebook romance

A secret affair started on Facebook may have provoked a shooting which left three
people dead, an inquest heard yesterday.

Andrew Copland shot his former partner Julie Harrison and their four-year-old daughter Maisie before turning the gun on himself.

A coroner heard the 56-year-old painter and decorator may have killed them after discovering Miss Harrison was having a relationship with an old schoolfriend.

The bloodbath was discovered after a neighbour dialled 999 after seeing 40-year-old Miss Harrison desperately banging on the inside of a window.

The inquest heard that she had moved out of Copland’s home in Aldershot into a flat in the Hampshire town.

Her new boyfriend, Lee Johnston, told the inquest he had regained contact with Miss Harrison through the Facebook website.

They were together on the morning of the day she died, December 29, and he had been due to meet her again after she dropped Maisie off at her father’s home.

Mr Johnson said: ‘She had told me Andrew had been violent on a number of occasions. He had punched her and pushed her down the stairs.’

He said he and Miss Harrison had gone to great lengths to keep their relationship a secret from Copland.

She had a mobile phone which she used only to contact Mr Johnston.

He said: 'She did not want Andrew to find out because she was scared of what he might do. She thought that he would be violent to her and any man that she was seeing.’

Mr Johnston, who lives in Northampton, said that when she failed to answer his phone calls he drove to Copland’s home and found it cordoned off by police.

Neighbour Rachel Southon told how she heard Copland bolt the door – and seconds later saw Miss Harrison fall to the floor.

She said: 'I saw the back of Andrew through the glass. Then he disappeared and I saw Julie banging on the window. She fell back as if he had hit her with something. At that point I phoned the police.’

Maisie was found dead in the dining room and Copland in the hallway. Miss Harrison was still alive and was flown to hospital but died the following day.

Coroner Andrew Bradley heard that ballistic tests revealed that all three were shot by a 9mm 1930s Baretta handgun, which Copland had found in a builder’s skip in Surrey in 1998, complete with ammunition.

He ruled that Miss Harrison and Maisie were unlawfully killed and Copland took his own life.

After the hearing Copland’s older children Craig and Keely said their lives have been 'devastated'.

They said: 'We never could have imagined that our dad could do what he has done; to us, he was an ordinary dad who taught and helped and

loved us.

'As well as the grief and anger, there are so many "whys" and "if onlys". If only our dad had never found that gun and kept it hidden all those years.'

Hampshire police will tomorrow launch a two-week firearms amnesty to remove illegal weapons from the streets.

original article here

ALIBIS - need one?

Need an alibi? Thanks to an alert by a friend of this blog, we've learned it seems you can even BUY one!! Disgusting!

CLICK HERE:ALIBI NETWORK

Check out some of their services:

• Various Telephone Alibis.
• Renting Phone Numbers
• Untraceable Numbers
• Voice Mail Numbers, etc.

Example: HAVING A DISCREET AFFAIR OR ONLINE AFFAIR ABOUT TO GO 'OFFLINE'?

** We place a call to you in advance confirming that your seminar/training/conference is scheduled for a date and a location designated by you:

-- To call from a 'Private' phone number
-- To call from any number requested by a client

** We mail you a conference invitation along with the timetable and topics overview, backed up by our partner's company toll-free number with the trained receptionist who will be prescreening all incoming phone calls.

** We will send you an e-ticket confirmation that you will be able to print if you choose to travel to a destination different from your actual point of travel.

** We will set you up with the virtual hotel number which will be answered by a live operator 24 hours a day. The operator will greet a caller with an appropriate hotel greeting message and will handle a call according to the instructions.

** We will send you a Certificate of Completion within 10 business days from the end of training.

** We will e-mail you digital photographs of you among the students at a particular location chosen by you.

** We can make a follow up call to you from one of the "students" wanting to keep in touch with you. (His phone number could be kept for a future need.)

Escape-a-Date Service.
Our service allows you to set-up a "save me from my date" phone call at a predetermined time. In this way, we will call you at the time you wish and if your date is not going that great, we will set the tone for an immediate getaway. .

Start or Break Up Relationships.
Just let us know when and what you would like us to manage and we will handle it for you! Please fill out a simple online request form so we can personally address your relationships needs.

Private Mail Receiving Service.
** Are you concerned about the possible lack of privacy of the mail and packages currently being delivered to your home or office?

** Do you want to keep your name and physical location hidden from people or entities you are corresponding online to?

** Is someone you met online (who may perhaps, think you are single) sending you a letter or a package and you prefer they not know your actual physical location?
Avoid awkward situations and use our discreet shipping services.

Private Phone Call Services.
**Do you need us to make a phone call, but want the phone call to appear from Paris? With the Paris number showing up on the caller id of the intended party?

# Are you in Dubai, but telling your partner you are in Tokyo? Would you like to have us assign a Tokyo number to you, receive the phone call on your behalf and forward it to your number in Dubai?

# Do you want to create an impression that you are staying in a certain hotel anywhere in the world? Complete with the 24 hr hotel receptionist answering in the accent of your choice and confirming your stay?

# Do you want to create an impression that you are flying by a certain airline on a certain date anywhere in the World?

Does anyone remember honesty? Will the internet ever be safe again? - EOPC