Tag: craigslist

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Philly Online Extortion Crimes

Philadelphia police are searching for a man who used Craigslist to meet at least three gay men, then later posed as a detective and extorted money from two of them. The suspect, described as black and about 6-foot-3, met the men on Craigslist’s “Men Seeking Men” personals section, and arranged to meet them at various locations in the city. During the encounters, he had a detective’s badge, handcuffs and a walkie-talkie, and spoke in a confident manner that convinced the men he was a plainclothes detective, they said.

“He was a smooth talker, and very convincing,” one man said.

The three victims spoke to Philadeplphia Gay News on the condition of anonymity. They said the incidents happened in April and June. The suspect allegedly told the men they were vulnerable to criminal prosecution because they were looking for sexual partners on Craigslist without properly screening out minors. One man, from the Fairmount section, traveled to a nearby bank with the suspect, withdrew about $1,200 from his account and gave it to him. Another man, from the Fishtown section, gave the suspect $800 after traveling to a bank at a shopping center in Northeast Philadelphia. The third man didn’t give the suspect any money, but he reported the incident to Central Detectives, where it remains under investigation, he said. The Fairmount man said he preserved scissors that the suspect touched, which might help determine his identity. He called the city’s LGBT Police Liaison Office to report the incident. But he was dissuaded from pursuing the matter after being told that a formal police report must be filed before any additional action could be taken, he said. Officer Mitchell Spritzler of the LGBT Police Liaison Office, who spoke with the Fairmount man, told PGN it’s standard procedure to inform victims they must file a police report before an investigation can begin. But Spritzler also said a police report can be written in a way that protects a victim’s reputation.

“The report can be general enough to give enough information without giving too many details,” Spritzler said. “But if the case goes to trial, other documents would contain details, and the person’s identity would be known.”

Police reports are available to the general public for a $25 fee, Spritzler added. The Fishtown man called 911 after the suspect contacted him a second time at work to request additional money. The man refused to pay, but said he was disappointed with the attitude of the responding officer.

“It was like [the officer] was putting me on trial, instead of gathering information about the perpetrator,” the man said.

 The police report filed by the responding officer states that the victim paid another man $3,000 to avoid having his gay sexual orientation disclosed. It doesn’t state the perpetrator was posing as a Philadelphia police detective. Spritzler said he would see to it that a supervisor discusses the necessity of comprehensive police reports with the officer. “Incomplete reports are a problem that needs to be addressed,” added Spritzler. “I spoke with the officer’s supervisor, and he will discuss this during a training class at roll call. All the officers need to know that comprehensive police reports are necessary.” Spritzler stressed that police are actively pursuing the Craigslist suspect, and that follow-up calls have been made to the three victims to gather additional information. “We’re concerned that someone is impersonating a police detective,” Spritzler said. “There’s an active investigation concerning all three complainants, and we’re coordinating our efforts. There’s someone out there preying on people, and we’ve got to get him off the street.” Anyone with information about a Craigslist suspect can call the LGBT Police Liaison Office at (215) 685-3655.

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Craigslist Robbery

A man has been arrested after he was accused of meeting another man through Craigslist and robbing him in Apex, North Carolina. Apex is a growing suburb of Raleigh, North Carolina. Police say Gary Rezendes and the victim met through the “casual encounters” section of Craiglist and decided to meet in person on April 4 at an Apex, North Caroina, Home Depot parking lot. Sgt. Sean Pearson of the Apex Police Department told Q-Notes that Rezendes was carrying a knife, stole $40 from the victim and fled the scene afterward. The victim was unharmed.

“From my interview with [Rezendes], he had stated that the whole purpose of being on [Craiglist] was to commit a robbery, that there was no previous intent of meeting anyone,” Pearson said. “He was on Craigslist initially looking at things to buy and saw the ads in the personals and thought of it as a quick way to make some money by committing a robbery.”

More On The Story at Q-Notes - Click Here To Read

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Craigslist Rids Escort Ads

Online classified ads service Craigslist will get rid of its "erotic services" category that critics called a front for prostitution, replacing it with an adult category that will be reviewed by Web site employees, state attorneys general announced Wednesday. Pressure to remove the category increased this spring after a Boston medical student was charged with killing a masseuse who authorities say he met through Craigslist. Two months ago, Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart filed a lawsuit alleging that Craigslist allowed the solicitation of prostitution and had created the "largest source of prostitution in America." Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan and the attorneys general of Connecticut and Missouri met with Craigslist officials last week seeking an end to ads they contended were advertisements for illegal sexual activities. Madigan's office said Wednesday such existing ads on the Craiglist Web site will expire in seven days.

"We're very encouraged that Craigslist is doing the right thing in eliminating its online red light district with prostitution and pornography in plain sight. We'll be watching and investigating critically to make sure this measure is more than just a name change," said Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal. "This is a good next step but by no means is it the ultimate or complete solution," he said.

Blumenthal had brokered an agreement with Craiglist in November to crack down on prostitution ads. Here are two examples of ads where prostitution is constructively suggested in tonights craigslist for Atlanta area.

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Boy Says Murder 'Accidental'

John Katehis, the accused murderer of NY radio news man George Weber answered a Craigslist ad "seeking a sadomasochistic partner to smother him" according to documents viewed by the New York Daily News:

"Katehis, 16, pleaded not guilty at his arraignment Friday on murder charges, where his lawyer Jeffrey Schwartz argued the teen was defending himself from a sexual attack by Weber who called himself 'smotherboy' and was wielding a knife. But Katehis' signed confession tells a different story. The teen claims the stabbing occurred after binding Weber's legs with duct tape in his Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, flat and was 'accidental.' ... 'He took [a small knife out of his pocket] to show it to me but I got nervous and grabbed for the knife,' Katehis wrote."

Check out our previous article - Online Hookups Expose (Photos) His attormey described the MySpace webpage on which Katehis professed his love for satan and knife-collecting as a "goofy, impressionable teenager trying to be macho.

View Video Of Court Hearing

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Markoff Targeted Men Also

Accused Craiglist killer Philip Markoff, who police suspect attacked a number of women, may have also been targeting men, as well. A man who wishes to remain anonymous came forward to NBC and told the world that he once had a correspondence with Markoff, whom he met in the "M4T" section of Craigslist’s casual encounters section. "M4T," by the way, means "man for transsexual." The man, who lives in Boston, first struck up a conversation with Markoff last spring and Markoff, using the email address "sexaddict5385" sent him explicit emails and wondered whether the man would be up for getting together. They never did, but, upon hearing the news of the Craigslist killer last week, the man checked his old emails and tells NBC that the pictures were definitely Markoff, “I immediately went to the computer and typed his name in. It popped right up. I was scared like you wouldn’t believe.”  Markoff, who remains in prison, was engaged to a woman named Megan McAllister, but the wedding has been canceled. If Markoff was in fact corresponding with men, this could take the investigation in an entirely new direction. And raises more questions about Markoff, a seemingly clean-cut medical student, who’s accused of killing a masseuse named Julissa Brisman and attacking at least two other women.

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Craiglist Killer Arrested

Phil Markoff, 22, was arrested during a traffic stop Monday afternoon on Interstate 95 in Walpole, south of Boston, Police Commissioner Ed Davis said at a news conference to announce the arrest. He is also connected to an assault on a Las Vegas exotic dancer in Rhode Island last week. Markoff's arrest came days after his image was shown on surveillance video at the hotels. Davis said that authorities had him under observation for days before making the arrest. Click here for photos from the case. Authorities said Markoff was originally from upstate New York and now lives in Quincy, just south of Boston. A Facebook profile matching Markoff's identity, including his photograph, lists him as a 2007 graduate of State University of New York-Albany and in the 2011 class at BU.

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Online Hookups Expose

Savage Love: Seeking sex online can be hazardous to your health. Looking into the murder of George Weber with composite photo gallery.Story By Dan Savage Tampa Creative Loafing - Photos: NY Daily News

I hope you address the recent rough-play-gone-bad death of New York City radio newsman George Weber. According to reports, it appears Weber met a guy on Craigslist for "violent sex," and the guy stabbed Weber to death. It's a reminder that if you have these kinds of fantasies -- Weber wanted to be bound and abused -- you're better off doing it with someone you trust and not with some random trick off the Internet. No one should wind up dead trying to fulfill a sexual desire.

Safety Conscious

First, I want to extend my sincerest condolences to George Weber's family and friends.

Second, reading about Weber's death reminded me of a joke -- this has to be the worst start to a second paragraph ever -- that Jon Stewart told on The Daily Show during the darkest days (er, years) of the insurgency in Iraq. Conservatives were complaining that a biased media wasn't reporting any of the good news in Iraq, nothing about all those freshly painted schoolrooms or, um, all those other freshly painted schoolrooms; the news out of Iraq then was all bloodletting, beheadings, and car bombs, all the time.

"Yeah," Stewart deadpanned. "We never hear about the cars that don't explode."

What happened to Weber was horrifying. And, yes, there are lessons in this horrific crime for anyone seeking sex and/or love online. But looking for sex online is not, as some have insisted in the wake of Weber's murder, so inherently risky a pursuit that only a lunatic would contemplate it. Remember: We never hear about the people hooking up online who don't get brutally murdered -- and unlike cars in Iraq that haven't exploded (yet), it's actually relevant that most people hooking up online aren't brutally murdered.

Every day, tens of thousands of people -- hundreds of thousands -- find partners online. While lots of folks online are seeking relationships at sites like Match.com or Christiansingles.com, there are more people online at any given moment seeking NSA sex at sites like AdultFriendFinder.com or Recon.com. If random Internet hookups were even half as dangerous as crimes like this make them seem -- if they were even one-one-hundredth as dangerous -- there would be a dozen online-hookup murders in New York City every day, and scores more in Toronto and San Francisco and Miami and Vancouver and Chicago.

No one should be cavalier about safety when it comes to Internet hookups, of course; people seeking NSA or fantasy-fulfillment sex online need to use common sense and take all reasonable precautions. Insist on a verifiable exchange of real names and real phone numbers before meeting; meet in person first, in a public place, preferably at a time when you can't mess around immediately after your first meeting. And people seeking the services of a pro should go to one of the dozen or more established Web sites out there that host ads from pros along with client reviews.

And it's always a bad idea to post an offer for $60 in exchange for sex to the crowd of fakes and freaks who have overrun Craigslist, as Weber is reported to have done. Meeting cheap whores via Craigslist ups your odds of hooking up with, say, a mentally unstable teenage "satanist" with a coke problem and a MySpace page packed with pictures of him wielding knives and swords.

Now perhaps Weber, working as a freelancer, couldn't afford the services of $200-an-hour professional dominant; maybe he had lowballed it on Craigslist a dozen times before and always had good experiences. Most people who ignore my advice about safety, or hook up with cheap CL hookers, do live to tell the tale. But when it comes to realizing a fantasy that involves violence or helplessness, someone safe, sane, and expensive is more than worth the investment.

Finally, people take calculated risks all the time for pleasures less essential than sex. You're assuming a certain degree of risk -- of injury, of death -- every time you get in a car, go skiing, or order the chicken. We do what we can to minimize those risks (buckle the fuck up, wear a helmet, don't order your chicken rare), but we don't hold up deaths on highways, slopes, or at the dinner table as evidence that people who even think of driving, skiing, or chickening have to be out of their minds.

The sad fact is that some of us will die at the hands of our intimate partners. Do what you can to minimize your risk of being murdered by a sex partner, because some people are dangerous lunatics -- and not just Internet hookups. Yes, George Weber took the wrong guy home, no question. So did Laci Peterson.

PHOTO GALLERY OF GEORGE WEBER MURDER

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Arrest Made in Brooklyn Murder

The 16-year-old boy arrested in the fatal stabbing of the radio journalist George Weber was ordered held without bail late Wednesday on charges of second-degree murder and criminal possession of a weapon. The teenager, John Katehis, of East Elmhurst, Queens, did not enter a plea or make any statement during the arraignment before Judge John H. Wilson of Brooklyn Criminal Court. Mr. Katehis was arrested on Tuesday night outside a bus depot in Middletown, N.Y., in Orange County. “He subsequently made statements implicating himself in the stabbing death,” said Paul J. Browne, the chief spokesman for the New York Police Department. Mr. Weber, 47, who recently had been working as a freelance anchor for ABC News Radio, the national network, was found in his apartment in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, on Sunday. He had been stabbed about 50 times, the police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly, said. Herb Moses, the public defender representing Mr. Katehis, told Judge Wilson that it was a “very tragic situation.” He added that he thought his client had been “used by an older gentleman” and that he expected more details to emerge about Mr. Katehis’s encounter with Mr. Weber. Officials said the teenager apparently answered a Craigslist ad in which Mr. Weber, 47, sought a sexual partner. The police believed Mr. Weber planned to pay Mr. Katehis for sex. The police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly, said that the two had arranged to meet on Wednesday, March 18, but rescheduled the meeting for Friday evening. A neighbor saw someone, believed by the police to be Mr. Katehis, speaking on a cellphone outside Mr. Weber’s building on Henry Street. Mr. Weber may have allowed him to enter the apartment about 6 p.m., and while he was inside, the suspect stabbed him about 50 times, Mr. Kelly said. No weapon has been found, the police said. The police would not say why they believed the teenager stabbed Mr. Weber. He had no criminal record. No one at his home Wednesday would comment on the case. At 9:13 p.m. Friday, a conductor on a northbound G train saw a passenger bleeding profusely from his left hand, Mr. Kelly said. The passenger, who Mr. Kelly said was Mr. Katehis, was met by Emergency Medical Services workers at station and taken to Elmhurst Hospital Center, where he was treated and released, Mr. Kelly said. He told the police that he had cut his hand on a bottle. Judge Wilson ordered Wednesday that Mr. Katehis continue to receive medical attention for the cut. An autopsy on Mr. Weber was performed on Monday, and the police said he had been stabbed in the head and neck, the front and rear of his torso, and the arms and hands. Mr. Katehis had changed his bloody clothes after the attack and put on some of Mr. Weber’s, Mr. Kelly said. The teenager then fled to Middletown to a friend’s house on Tuesday morning, Mr. Kelly said. Detectives tracked him down through a search of Mr. Weber’s computer communications and from information they received from family members of Mr. Katehis’s, he said. In Middletown on Tuesday, law enforcement officials said, Mr. Katehis’s father helped arrange for his son to go to the bus depot. As the boy approached a vehicle expecting to see his father, detectives got out and the boy fled across the street, where more detectives were waiting in an unmarked van. They tackled Mr. Katehis and handcuffed him. Late Wednesday afternoon, several friends gathered at Angry Wade’s, a tavern where Mr. Weber had been a regular, to recall a man who often greeted them with a smile and who had a contagious laugh. He was somebody who loved to talk and debate, they said. They lighted candles, and had drinks sitting at the bar in front of an empty chair at his customary place. There were handwritten messages on napkins on the bar surrounding a glass poured for him. “We’ll all miss you,” one said. Outside the bar, John Peterman, 35, a coordinating producer for a television production company who lives across the street from Mr. Weber, said: “Friendships run deep in our neighborhood. And George was friends with many people.” Mr. Katehis’s MySpace page, which was taken down Wednesday, said he enjoyed “drinking, bike riding, hanging out, roof hopping, hanging off trains,” and “extreme violence (chaos, anarchy, etc ...) video games, violent movies and listening to my iPod.”

“I am an extremist, an anarchist and a sadomasochist. As long as you show respect for me, I will show respect for you.”

But it warned that if he were not shown respect, he would “break your neck.” Story Reprinted From New York Times. Subscribe To The New York Times Here Permission ID:GAMG20091001osub

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Prostitutes around the Clock

Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart says he’s busted enough prostitutes who were pimped out on Craigslist to know the popular on-line classified site is the country’s largest whorehouse. “I am fed up. I am tired and this is going to stop,” Dart said. Today, Dart filed a federal lawsuit asking a judge to force San Francisco-based Craigslist to eliminate the “erotic services” section of its website, where he said most prostitution ads are posted. The lawsuit also asks that Craigslist reimburse Cook County for the salaries of officers that who investigate prostitution and human trafficking through the website — a bill of more than $100,000. “We’re asking them to do what frankly they should have been doing all along — stop facilitating prostitution. Stop being the largest source of prostitution in America,” Dart said. “This may sound a little dramatic. It’s not. It’s real ... This is horrific stuff folks.” Since January 2007, sheriff’s police have arrested 200 people on prostitution charges, juvenile pimping and human trafficking directly connected to Craigslist advertisements. Arrests have ranged from suburban soccer moms to heroin addicts, a former reality TV star and several juveniles, some as a young as 14. A Craigslist spokeswoman said she has not seen Dart’s complaint, but the company does cooperate with law enforcement.

"Misuse of Craigslist to facilitate criminal activity is unacceptable, and we continue to work diligently to prevent it. Misuse of the site is exceptionally rare compared to how much the site is used for legal purposes," Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster said in a statement. "Craigslist is an extremely unwise choice for those intent on committing crimes, since criminals inevitably leave an electronic trail to themselves that law enforcement officers will follow. On a daily basis, we are being of direct assistance to police departments and federal authorities nationwide."

Dart, however, argued that Craigslist doesn't actively police the "erotic services" postings on its website and in fact provides a way for pimps to "insulate" themselves from being involved with paid sex acts. Craigslist "is an accomplice," Dart said. "How is it any different than two individuals being engaged in prostitution where one will handle the women and the other one is running advertising. There is no difference here.” Dart said he asked Craigslist several times over the last two years to voluntarily remove the section of the website most often used by prostitution rings, but to no avail. Dart said the federal lawsuit, which cites public nuisance laws, was the most effective way to make a difference.

“Could I arrest prostitutes around the clock? Yeah, what’s the point here?” Dart said. “I want to do something that matters in helping these women. The best way is to remove this site that actively and aggressively helping this crime going forward.”

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Larry Craig bathroom now a tourist attraction

MINNEAPOLIS --- There was no line for the first tourist attraction that many delegates to the 2008 Republican National Convention were encountering. The airport men's room where Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho) allegedly sought sex from an undercover male police officer was open for use after a janitor finished cleaning it Saturday afternoon. Classical music played, the Dyson Airblade hand-dryers whirred and a "Diaper Deck" fold-down diaper-changing table went unused. Shortly after Craig was arrested there in June 2007, the men's room became a bit of a tourist attraction, with men and women asking directions and stopping to take pictures. Toilet paper from the restroom was offered on E-Bay, but the hubbub eventually died down. Airport officials say they have no plans to cordon off the restroom as thousands of delegates and media from around the country and the world land here this weekend. Craig is not expected to join the Republican delegation from his state. He pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct after the officer conducting a sting in the bathroom said Craig looked into his stall, sat in the adjacent stall, tapped his foot under the divider and reached under the stall. Craig has responded that he just had a "wide stance," is "not gay" and only pleaded guilty to avoid a spectacle. He tried to withdraw his guilty plea, but an appeals court turned him down. EDITOR'S NOTE A visit over to CraigsList gave us hundreds of good republicans meeting up through Craig's Men Seeking Men ... Maybe Larry Should Have Used Craig    <click image for full size>

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