May 2008

Caught On Craigslist:
Grant Allen Houser posted ads on craigslist advertising his services for mental health counseling in Florida.

The only problem is that Houser has no license to perform such counseling.

You’d have to wonder about the mental health of someone who would look for professional help on craigslist.

Wife Wants Divorce After Nude Maid Steals Jewelry From Home:
Remember the guy who hired a nude maid from craigslist who robbed his home of $40K of his wife’s jewelry? Well, if you couldn’t have seen this coming, his wife has filed for divorce.

“I’m gonna divorce him, because I can’t trust him. He violated every core of marriage and trust,” she said.

The cynic in me says the $40K of jewelry had more to do with it.

Speaking of the missing jewelry police have named Kenna Dimartini as a person of interest. The article has a pic of Ms. Dimartini and yes, you’d hit it.

YouTube helps catch Craigslist theft suspect:
Not too long ago I posted about businessman Wayne Reavis whose home business was robbed after he placed some ads on craigslist.

One of the suspects, 18-year-old Henry Gill, was caught after the Rohnert Park, California police posted Reavis’ surveillance footage to YouTube.

To see more stories about crime and how it relates to YouTube you can check out one of my other blogs ViceTube.

Police: Craigslist Ad Leads To Arrest Of Hooker, Pimp At Altamonte Hotel:
Police in Altamonte Springs, Florida have arrested a craigslist pimp and hooker in a sting.

Those arrested were Adina Davis (alleged hooker) and Ernest Destine (alleged pimp).

I received the following e-mail from Greg Collier, CEO of Geebo.com. He seems to have taken a stance on safety and has thrown the gaunlet down at craigslist.

A Call to Action: Make Web Sites Safer!

Check fraud, identity theft, rights infringement, prostitution, child exploitation, property theft, escrow fraud all are daily occurrences on the Internet. Several incidents have become the stuff of urban legend. The man in Oregon who came home to find his belongings gone thanks to a Craigslist ad. The woman who in January posted an ad to hire a hit man. Or take your pick of dozens of sting operation stories involving various types of crimes. In February 2008, sting operations took place in Melbourne FL, Lenexa KS, Wayne County MI, Portland OR, Mt. Juliet TN, and more.

Relevant facts:

·Most Internet crimes are not reported in the media. Most are probably not reported to the FBI either, yet FBI reports of Internet crimes reached the 1-million mark in mid-2007.

·Some Internet crimes are made easier by the practices of certain sites.

Take, for example, the erotic services category on Craigslist. Seattle police and many other law enforcement agencies have had no trouble demonstrating that this section has promoted prostitution. Information Week reports that Craigslist management claims to be taking steps to reduce that particular type of illegal activity on the site, but a quick perusal of the site’s personal, erotic and therapeutic services categories suggests otherwise.

·Where to look: On any city’s version of Craigslist, you’ll find ‘erotic’ just seven lines below ’sporting’ (the spot where your teen might look for a used kayak).

·Craigslist crimes are becoming so rampant that web sites and blogs are springing up to track them, including craigscrimelist.org.

·Some may call Craigslist prostitution ads ‘victimless’ crimes, but who’s to say that since ads for illegal activity appear here in plain sight, criminals may be attracted to this site and may then move on to other categories where it would be relatively easy to prey on innocent people looking for a job or apartment? In October 2007, 24 yr-old Minnesota resident, Katherine Ann Olson, responded to a Craigslist ad for a nanny and was killed by the man who posted it. Others have been physically assaulted.

Craigslist staff have been quoted as saying that the site is simply too big to monitor. While that might be a significant part of the problem, other sites, large and small, are managing to take such steps. In fact, many sites (PayPal, banking sites, investment sites, and more) would not be able to stay in business if they did not successfully monitor for potential criminal activity.

To prove this is not impossible in the realm of community buying a selling, take a look at Geebo.com, a community site that works much like Craigslist with the important difference being that it is regularly monitored. While both community sites have grown from one to many cities (and both started in northern California), Geebo has a physical presence in many of those cities, and it uses both technological tools and staffing to spot and remove scams and other crimes.

“We can often detect illegal activity pretty easily,” says Geebo CEO, Greg Collier. “Not only can we trace suspicious ads, we actually read the ads on our site, the free postings included. We’re committed to continuing this practice, no matter how big we get. We’ve seen enough of these schemes to be able to spot fraud that our visitors wouldn’t be able to spot for themselves. We want our site to be as safe as we can make it.” Collier would like to see more site owners take action to protect their visitors.

More information:

Where to report Internet fraud: [url]www.fbi.gov/page2/april08/ic3_report040308.html[/url]

Where to get more info on predators: [url]www.fbi.gov/innocent.htm[/url]

Types of scams: [url]www.lookstoogoodtobetrue.com/stories.aspx[/url]

Safety tips for teens: [url]72.32.1.50/[/url] (including information on how to report suspicious activity to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children)

FBI Guide to Internet safety: [url]www.fbi.gov/publications/pguide/pguidee.htm[/url]

Those are some bold statements but it’s nothing I disagree with.

I haven’t gotten knee deep into Geebo yet but I hope to have a review up this weekend. From what little I saw so far it was fairly impressive.

Dad says Craigslist ad to sell baby was just a ’sick joke’:
The mother of the baby that was put up for sale on the Vancouver, BC craigslist says it was just a joke and the baby daddy is kind of a dick.

Instead, Bethany Granholm, 23, said Jeremy Pete, 26, was just “joking” and being a “bit of a dick” when he posted the controversial ad last Friday.

See.

Pete, who has a three-month-old son with another woman with whom he now lives, explained to The Province the ad resulted from a comment a friend made to him about how “adorable” his children were. He said the friend suggested he sell him one of his kids.

Someone needs to learn how to use a prophylactic. That’s a rubber for those who don’t know.

The article states that the mother has cleaned herself up but the baby is still a ward of the province right now.

Craigslist Ad Leads To Antioch Prostitution Sting:
Police in Antioch, California have arrested yet another craigslist hooker in one of their stings.

This time it was Kimelyse Hurley who not only had a meth pipe on her but also admitted to have 5 other girls working for her.

None of those girls could be considered victims could they?

Alleged Craigslist scammer charged with fraud:
Police in Vancouver, British Columbia have arrested 31-year-old Edward Frank Hamilton on fraud charges.

Hamilton would take ads out on craigslist claiming to rent out apartments that weren’t his. He’s then collect deposits from people after meeting them at a fast food place. Then he’d give the victims phony keys that didn’t go to the apartments that he claimed to own.

It seems that Hamilton has quite the record too…

“We’ve had 43 contacts with him in the last few years, most of them in relation to frauds. He’s a very busy person,” Fanning said.

Two things need to happen to stop these kind of scams. First people need to educate themselves about scammers on craigslist and secondly craigslist needs to do away with the complete anonymity they afford their users.

Craigslist leads Norfolk County task force to Mansfield prostitution bust:
The Norfolk County Police Anti-Crime Task Force (NORPAC) in Massachusetts arrested two in a craigslist hooker sting.

It was the usual. Cops played the part of johns at a resident hotel and arrested the hookers after they got there.

Arrested were 26-year-old Nicole Barbosa and 46-year-old Tarah Vaughn.

5 allegedly used Craigslist for prostitution, drug deals:
Five people in the Detroit area were arrested for using craigslist for prostitution and to sell drugs. Where were they running these illegitimate businesses? Why out of a mobile home of course. Or as I’ve always called them, trailers.

The suspects are 4 women and 1 man who have not been identified at the time of the article.

PD: Prescott Valley man wanted to trade sex for rent in ad:
54-year-old Ronald D. Larson of Prescott Valley, Arizona placed an ad on craigslist looking for a roommate. He was so generous that he was going to pay the roommate’s rent himself. He only had minor qualifications. The roommate had to be an attractive woman between 18-54, and oh yeah they had to have sex with him up to three nights a week.

He actually got a response, except it was from the Prescott Police. Larson was charged with solicitation of prostitution.

Are there really women out there who sleep with guys for rent or is it another urban legend?

Vcr police considering charges over online ad offering baby girl for $10,000:
A Vancouver couple was arrested yesterday for putting an ad on craigslist offering a baby for sale for $10,000. That’s like a bajillion in American money.

When police tracked down the parents the 26-year-old father and 23-year-old mother claimed the ad was just a hoax.

I’m not so sure about that.

For one the ad was placed with a number that went back to a stolen cell phone. Secondly the ‘parents’ have a history of drug abuse.

The ‘parents’ were released without charges for now as police are saying charges may be forthcoming.

The seven day old baby was placed in protective custody.

It seems that craigslist head Jim Buckmaster has all of craigslist’s problems taken care of that he has enough time to complain about Ben Stein.

Something about glass houses comes to mind.

Nude maid cleans out posh house:
A man from Lutz, Florida hired a nude maid off of craigslist to ‘clean his house’ while his wife was away. The maid cleaned the house all right. She cleaned it out of $40,000 in jewelry. The residence was in a posh neighborhood. The wife noticed her jewelry missing when she returned. D’oh.

I love it when the media outlets get creative with stories like this one…

He obviously could not give deputies a clothing description.

And as LiLO asked me where did she hide the jewels?

The naked maid is still at large.

You know, I’ve heard tales of guys who fall for strippers/escorts/naked maids who give them a lot of jewelry over time. I’m just sayin’.

I received an e-mail from a reader by the name of BJ who says that the murder of Katherine Ann Olson is not the first murder that craigslist is connected to. (Not counting Donna Jou yet since she has not been found.) Unfortunately BJ doesn’t remember all the details and I thought I would ask the readers for help. Here is BJ’s email…

I don’t have any links for you, but the recent murders you list are not the first on Craig’s List. I am in the Seattle area and I specifically remember there was a news story several years ago (at least five years, probably more) about a woman who was murdered when she answered a job ad on Craig’s. Her body was found in South King County. The case was particularly sad because she had applied for an extra job in order to help her family, because her brother had just become paralyzed in an accident. I recall her family was in another state (I believe it was Arizona), and they had no other “kids” other than the murdered daughter and paralyzed son. Sorry I don’t have links or anything, as I don’t recall names or any other specific information. I definitely remember the website was Craig’s, because at the time I was applying for jobs there so obviously I took note.

So are there any readers out there from the Pacific Northwest who this story rings a bell for? If so please let me know.