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Pennsylvania loser admits to cyberstalking, sextorting college student in Boston
By adamg on Fri, 01/15/2016 - 12:16pm
A West Chester, PA man faces up to five years in federal prison after admitting yesterday he blackmailed a college student in Boston over some nude photos he had of her in a campaign that included a threat to drive here and "go on a rampage."
James Connor, 20, faces sentencing in April in US District Court in Boston following his admission to one count of cyberstalking and one count of extortion. His threats ended in October when he was arrested - after his victim finally couldn't take it anymore and went to her Boston school's police.
Connor and his victim met online in 2012. When he claimed to be suicidal, she sent him some Snapchat photos of herself naked - which Connor saved to his computer. According to the US Attorney's office:
After the relationship ended, Connor attempted to continue communications with the victim and initiated a campaign of harassment and intimidation. He threatened to harm her physically and harm her reputation by publicly disseminating the sexually explicit images. Connor also repeatedly threatened to commit suicide if the victim did not take his calls, and sent her pictures of him holding a knife to his throat with blood, which was later determined to be fake, dripping down his neck.
According to an affidavit by the FBI agent who investigated the case, after the woman began college in Boston in the fall of 2014, Connor told her he would delete all the images he already had if she sent him five new nudes - which she did.
But he continued to harass her - at one point threatening to rape her - and began insisting on more photos and demanded that she dump her current boyfriend. According to the affidavit, Connor backed up the demand with an angry "direct message" on Twitter in September, 2015:
YOU ARE ALREADY IN DEEP SHIT. YOU CAN CONTINUE PLAYING ME AND STALLING, BUT ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. IF YOU DON’T WANT TO BE RUINED, I SUGGEST YOU AGREE IM DONE FUCKING PLAYING GAMES
When the woman replied by begging him to just leave her alone, he answered with a threat to drive to Boston and "GO ON A RAMPAGE" - and a screen capture of a map showing the route from West Chester to Boston. Not long after that, she went to her school's police department to file a complaint, which led to the FBI being called in.
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| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
 FBI affidavit in the Connors case | 129.43 KB |
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Comments
Thank Rep Katherine Clark for
Thank Rep Katherine Clark for making the possibility of this prosecution possible. She's been on the side of the angels with this.
Guns in Schools
There are some presidential candidates calling for the legalization of students to carrying guns in schools as if that would be the "solution" to these sorts of people. I'd much rather laws be strengthen to prosecute guys like this (Thanks Clark) and continue to make it illegal for people to have any firearm on a campus except by the police.
I'm more concerned about students carrying guns for protection and misfiring, getting the weapons stolen, etc then I am about nut jobs like this carrying out a rampage. (Though for his prosecution I hope this threat adds to his punishment.)
As horrible as it must have been for this woman I hope her story is widely disseminated and others in similar circumstances know that going to the police is the best place to start.
Would you want this woman to
Would you want this woman to be allowed to defend herself or be utterly dependent that some investigator is going to take the compliant seriously and adequately protect her? Remember the Supreme Court ruled that police departments have no duty to protect anyone.
Our local DA's inability to keep mass shooters and career felons in prison for more than 5-7 years does not inspire confidence in the ability of the law to keep bad people locked up.
Which ones?
Which "mass shooters" has the DA failed to keep locked up?
This urban terrorist
http://www.universalhub.com/2015/gang-members-gets-prison-after-he-admit...
Are you arguing for guns in dorms?
Have you seen how drunk, drugged, mis-medicated, immature, sleep-deprived, underhanded, and just plain crazy college students tend to be?
I'd say that the odds of a single gun there resulting in a wrongful shooting are very high. Especially in the hands of someone stupid or crazy enough to think guns in dorms is a good idea.
No guns for college kids.
If college students are that
If college students are that bad then why are they:
allowed to vote
sign loans
sign contracts
be charged with adult crimes
serve in the armed forces
?
Time to raise the voting age to 26?
So we penalize them for being infantalized ...
... by infantilizing them even more!
Ah yes, a big of the problem is that people like you like to make laws raising the age for this, that, and something else in response to anything and everything, and then when the consequences of being naive and oversheltered and over controlled come about YOU DO IT AGAIN!
No, honey, just no.
Your attitude here is the CAUSE of this problem. Fools like you are why Congress had to make a law to prevent prosecution of parents for letting kids walk to their own fucking schools.
"There are some presidential
"There are some presidential candidates calling for the legalization of students to carrying guns in schools"
#1: That is not how English works. If you can't form a sentence at a third grade level, you should question whether or not your thoughts need to be shared.
#2: This story has nothing to do with guns on campus.
What is
the minimum sentence?
from the release ...
blech just realized that this says nothing about minimums ... sorry!
Terrible news for the fedora
Terrible news for the fedora haberdashers in and around Philadelphia.
Why did she agree
to send him pics to begin with? Did he send her explicit pics of himself?
I'm glad everything turned out OK for her, and this guy got caught. Men and women, young and old, need to be less gullible.
fear instead of immediately
fear instead of immediately contacting the FBI
online relationships can be very hazy
Sometimes you "meet" someone online, correspond for a bit, flirt a bit, and then realize that the person is far less fun and well-adjusted than s/he first seemed. It's happened to me (albeit without the whole sending-nudes thing), because I was young and stupid and impulsive. Someone I thought was interesting and attractive and worthwhile turned out to be a manipulative nutjob, and it was very scary when he flipped that switch.
Very glad she's physically okay, even if she's probably emotionally shaken.
Unfortunately many of these
Unfortunately many of these young women learn the hard way about sending suggestive pictures on the internet.
I can't imagine what I would've done if this technology was around when I was young. I know I'd ever send nudes to someone I just met, but things aren't always black and white.
Just think for a moment, how different our lives would've been if we had this technology that the kids do today.
why do any of us
do half the things we do for the people we think we can trust?
at least we dont have interwebs people blaming us for it most of the time.