Commentary

Man Arrested Four Times After Ex Frames Him On Facebook

Social media is the future, and not just for media and advertising: it’s great for framing your ex-lovers, too! Just ask Tyler Parkervest, a California man who was arrested four times and hit with a huge bail payment after his ex-girlfriend used Facebook to make it look like he was stalking her.

Parkervest’s ex, 25-year-old Stephani Lawson, set up a fake Facebook profile using his image and various personal details under the name “Tyler Parker,” then sent herself threatening messages from the account, in which Parkervest for example supposedly vowed to kill her and her young daughter. She also accused him falsely of driving by her house.

Altogether, Lawson filed a total of eight complaints against Parkervest, resulting in four separate arrests, and even obtained a restraining order against him – which she then accused him of violating. In December 2015, following multiple fabricated incidents and felony charges, a judge raised Parkervest’s bail to $200,000, forcing his grandparents to put their home up as collateral.

Lawson’s scheme finally fell apart when police obtained search warrants for her personal mobile device and social profile with T-Mobile and Facebook, and discovered that her IP address matched that of the Facebook profile sending the messages. Subsequently all charges against Parkervest were dropped, and new charges were filed against Lawson.

This week Lawson pleaded guilty to a number of felonies, including “false imprisonment by menace, violence, fraud, or deceit” and perjury.

California seems to lead the way in online creepiness. Previously, I wrote about the case of Luis Mijangos, a hacker who used his knowledge of computer languages to gain control of social media accounts and media devices to spy on and control his victims. In 2009 Mijangos created malware and tricked women and teenage girls into downloading it on their computers, not only giving him access to all their files, photos and videos, but also allowing him to see everything they typed on their keyboards and even activate their Web cams and microphones to watch and record the victims without their knowledge.

Mijangos used this access to keep logs of damaging or embarrassing actions for further blackmail and extortion, and also spied on victims’ communications to see if they were contacting law enforcement, friends, or family about the sextortion. Mijangos also hacked the social media accounts and impersonated victims’ boyfriends to get nude photos.

Then there’s Arturo Galvan, of Menifee, CA, who was arrested last year following a string of six burglaries in Fullerton, CA. All the burglaries targeted college-aged women, who reported the theft of underwear, jewelry, framed photos, and other items. Police said Galvan had stalked the women on social media by the GPS location data embedded on photos posted to their online profiles; they didn’t disclose how Galvan chose his victims in the first place. The stolen items were later discovered in his garage.

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