Intellectual Property Law

Man Charged in Facebook Sex-Extortion Plot

By Ryan Singel, Kevin Poulsen, Sarah Lai Stirland, Kim Zetter, and David Kravets

An 18-year-old Wisconsin man is being charged with using Facebook to extort sex from boys by threatening to expose nude pictures of them he obtained by acting as girls on the social-networking site.

Waukesha County prosecutors alleged (.pdf) Anthony Stancl posed as females on Facebook, and solicited nude photos and videos from young boys, some of them he knew were under-aged. Stancl, a high school student just west of Milwaukee, was recently expelled for allegedly making a bomb threat. He's also accused of forcing six under-aged boys and one aged 18 to have sexual encounters with him, prosecutors said.

He enticed them by threatening to release their nude images to classmates, Waukesha County District Attorney Brad Schimel said. "The extortion was all about sex," Schimel said in a telephone interview.

"The sexual contact occurred because they were afraid the person they were communicating with would post their nude images to their classmates," Schimel said.

The case has parallels to the Lori Drew case, the first prosecution of its kind in which the 49-year-old woman was convicted in November of three misdemeanor federal computer-hacking charges.

Drew was accused of obtaining unauthorized access to MySpace by creating a fake profile for a nonexistent 16-year-old boy named "Josh Evans." The account was used to flirt with, and then reject a 13-year-old old girl who committed suicide. The conviction is on appeal.

However, the Waukesha County district attorney said that, under Wisconsin law, "The use of the Facebook page and pretending to be a female was not illegal."

The defendant remains jailed in lieu of $250,000 bail, Schimel said. He said the accused is to appear in court Feb. 27.

The defendant's attorney, Craig Kuhary, did not immediately return telephone calls, but told The Associated Press that he was open to a plea deal.

Among other things, the defendant is charged with possession of child pornography, soliciting sex with minors and making a bomb threat by e-mail to teachers at his high school in November.

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Full post as published by Threat Level on February 05, 2009 (boomark / email).