Plea Agreement reflects dangers of Facebook and other social networking sites

The documents linked to this article are the signed and filed plea agreements on a case involving Facebook. Criminal Conduct involved numerous violations of 18 USC 875, 1951, 1952, 2251, and 2422.  Victims ranged in age from 14 through 26 years old.  In total, there were hundreds of victims. Not all the victims have been identified, and others have been uncooperative.

The accused was able to victimize these children and young adults through various ways, including, but not limited to, 1) Social Engineering; 2) Guessing Security Questions from information obtained from our victim’s myspace/facebook accounts, i.e. what’s your school mascot? What’s the name of your pet?; and/or 3) Extortion/Threats/Intimidation.

Once he gained control of their facebook account and various other email accounts he used extortion/threats/intimidation to get the children and young adults to send him naked pictures, either by still images or web cam.

Sentencing is scheduled for April.

Click here to view the Plea Agreement.