Sunday, March 23, 2014

Offendex (extortion website) is going out of business

This looks like the end of Offendex and affiliate extortion sites. And I'm not surprised that the owners of Offendex are convicted felons. I am amazed they managed to make a lot of money from these websites. The article from AZCentral is incredibly detailed so read on:

http://www.azcentral.com/story/money/business/consumer/call%252012%2520for%2520action/2014/03/22/scrutiny-suspends-websites-dealings/6761309/

Brent Oesterblad

Scrutiny suspends websites' dealings
Robert Anglen, The Republic | azcentral.com 11:16 p.m. EDT March 22, 2014

A shadowy network of Arizona-based Internet companies that used public records to demand money from sex offenders and harass those who complained has imploded amid lawsuits, court hearings and new standards enacted by banks, social media and technology companies.

The websites, including Offendex.com, SORArchives and Sexoffenderrecord.com, in November stopped seeking payments from people in exchange for removing profiles, blaming the change on "many conflicts, threats, unreasonable requests and false accusations about this website."

The move followed decisions by MasterCard, Visa, Discover and PayPal to stop processing transactions from what many describe as extortion websites. Google also changed its formula to prevent sites from using search-engine algorithms to increase viewership and monetize on public records such as police mugshots.

A Call 12 for Action investigation, published in May, found that the Arizona-based sex-offender sites mined data compiled by law-enforcement agencies across the country and used it to collect money. Operators of the sites did not always take down profiles after payments were made and launched online harassment campaigns against those who balked at financial demands or filed complaints.


ChuckRodrick and Traci Heisig
The investigation found the websites listed individuals as sex offenders who no longer were required to register or whose names had been removed from sex-offender databases. The sites also included names and personal information of people who had never been arrested or convicted of a sex crime.

In an interview with Call 12 for Action last month, website operator Brent Oesterblad accused owner Charles "Chuck" Rodrick of taking elaborate steps to conceal his ownership of the websites and misleading state and federal judges about it. Oesterblad's comments were backed by court testimony and banking records.

"I have personal knowledge that Rodrick has misrepresented the facts of his ownership of the sex-offender websites to his former wife, to the Maricopa County Superior Court and to U.S. District Courts in California and Arizona," Oesterblad said in a affidavit filed last month in federal court.

Rodrick, 52, of Cave Creek, has refused interviews for more than a year and would not speak about the websites after a Feb. 19 court hearing in Maricopa County Superior Court.

Rodrick and Oesterblad, both of whom were convicted on fraud-related charges in the early 1990s, are at the center of several state and two federal lawsuits. Sex offenders and others named on the websites have accused them of running an extortion racket. Rodrick and Oesterblad are also accused of posting inaccurate or old information and using the threat of exposure as leverage in their operation.

Rodrick responded to allegations by filing defamation lawsuits against some of his detractors, including his ex-wife and her boyfriend, both of whom were profiled on the sex-offender websites even though neither has a criminal record. Rodrick has also sued their lawyers.

In court filings, Rodrick repeatedly has denied owning the websites. In a federal declaration last year, he said he lacked "ownership interest in any of the companies that own the websites" and does "not have control over the websites as an owner."

Oesterblad told Call 12 for Action he helped disguise Rodrick's ownership interest by opening bank accounts and filing corporation papers for him. He said Rodrick further hid his role by registering website domain names in foreign countries and running them through proxy servers. His claims are backed by court records and testimony.

Oesterblad, who defended his work managing the sex-offender sites, said they did not start out as a way to demand money from offenders.

"It wasn't supposed to be a 'take-down' service. It started purely as an alert service," he said in the interview, adding that when the sites failed to make money "(Rodrick) made a command decision ... to do something to generate revenue."

Financial records lay out connection to websites, forensic computer specialist says

Financial records, including checks, credit-card receipts, tax documents and bank-account data, presented in court last month provided a picture of Rodrick's involvement in the websites.

"Whoever is receiving money would have control over the websites," according to Phoenix forensic computer specialist Juan Lorenzana, who testified against Rodrick in Superior Court in February. "Revenue is flowing to him through the websites."

Lorenzana, president of JEL Enterprises Inc., testified it was impossible to track the websites themselves to Rodrick. But money going from the sex-offender websites painted a road map that led directly to Rodrick, Lorenzana testified.

Among the financial transactions detailed in court were tens of thousands of dollars to Rodrick's girlfriend, Traci Heisig.

Heisig, who is a court reporter and owns Desert Hills Reporting in Phoenix, is a joint plaintiff in the defamation suit against Rodrick's ex-wife, her boyfriend and a sex offender in Washington.

Financial records presented in court showed $80,000 from the websites went to help Heisig buy a condominium in Rocky Point, Mexico, and $13,000 to buy her jewelry. The account was also used to make multiple payments of about $5,000 for Heisig's office lease on Camelback Road and for a $5,000 personal check, records showed.

Heisig did not respond to an interview request made through her lawyer.

Lorenzana said in courtthe sex-offender websites generated revenue through two sources: removal fees and ad revenue generated by the sites. Money to Rodrick could be tracked through ClickBank information provided on the websites, Lorenzana said.

ClickBank is a mechanism that generates revenue for websites based on traffic and product promotion. Lorenzana said money from the websites went to bank accounts used by an affiliated company called Civic Sentry, which does business as Web Express Ventures.

According to corporation documents, Oesterblad is the sole manager of Civic Sentry.

Rodrick, who doesn't have a lawyer, repeatedly suggested in court he wasn't the owner of the sites because his name is not on corporation filings. But Lorenzana maintained Rodrick's singular control of the money proved his control and ownership of the websites.

Maricopa County Superior Court judge sets deadline to remove all posts about defendants

Rodrick has been aided in document preparation for his legal fight by a felon who works at a polygraph school, claims to have a background in paralegal work and lists J.D. after her name in a school catalog, implying she has a law degree.

Court records show Kelley Bradbury served eight years in a Colorado prison for theft beginning in 1997.

In her resume for the Polygraph School of Science in Phoenix, Bradbury lists among her credentials a degree in paralegal studies from Rio Salado College. In the current school catalog, she lists her name as "Kelley Bradbury, M.S., J.D."

The State Bar of Arizona has no listing for Bradbury, meaning she is not licensed to practice law in the state. Rio Salado College officials also say records show Bradbury took paralegal classes but never earned a degree.

Officials say she obtained a "certificate of completion in airline operations."

Bradbury did not return multiple calls seeking comment about her background.

E-mails and computer records show Bradbury has assisted Rodrick with court motions. On a Web page, a person named Kelley Bradbury posted comments about one of the people involved in the federal suit against Rodrick and defended the sex-offender websites.

"I feel much safer knowing that sites like www.offendex.com are out there!" a person identified as Bradbury wrote. "If you didn't want your information made public you should not have committed a sex crime!!"

The post could become problematic for Rodrick. The February court hearings involved a request for sanctions against him for posts on websites about defendants in the defamation cases.

In an e-mail this month, a plaintiff in the federal-racketeering case whom Rodrick sued for defamation wrote an e-mail telling Rodrick to remove the content.

"I would request that your ... document preparer remove the slime she has up about me," Adam Galvez of Washington wrote. "She's a part of this case. If she does not remove this I will be informing the court."

While cross-examining witnesses during the hearing, Rodrick repeatedly asserted no evidence existed to show he posted the information to the sites.

But later in the hearing, Rodrick tried to broker a deal, offering to take down the offensive posts.

Superior Court Judge Katherine Cooper responded by imposing a deadline for Rodrick to remove all posts about the defendants or face arrest.

On. Feb. 24, Cooper issued a civil arrest warrant for Rodrick, which she later rescinded.

No law-enforcement action taken against operators of sex-offender websites

Call 12 for Action last year found that not all of the people listed on the sex-offender websites are registered sex offenders. Some have no criminal records. Yet their names, addresses and other personal information were put on the sex-offender websites for anyone with an Internet connection to view.

Those who challenged Rodrick and Oesterblad said the interactions frequently turned ugly, with intimidating calls, vitriolic e-mails and threats of lawsuits. Pictures of offenders' family members were posted on the websites along with their addresses. In another case, an offender's Facebook friends were added to the sites.

"Since you like Facebook so much ... we have added your 65 friends to your page on Offendex," an e-mail from website operators stated.

In other cases, the websites profiled offenders whose names had been removed from state sex-offender registries.

State police and departments of correction generally are responsible for maintaining official sex-offender registries, which can include an offender's name, photograph, physical characteristics, addresses and description of the crime.

Sex offenders are sometimes removed from state registries because their crimes have been reclassified and no longer are considered serious enough to require registration. Some offenders are required to register only with law enforcement, and their names would not appear on public registries.

Others have done their time and have sought court orders to remove their names from state and national registries.

The websites advertised records for 750,000 sex offenders. The sites promised to protect families from the menace of sex offenders in their neighborhoods by providing access to present and past criminal records.

Complaints about the websites have been made with attorneys general in at least five states, including Arizona. Complaints also have been submitted to the FBI, the Federal Trade Commission and the Internet Crime Complaint Center, which works with the FBI to refer Internet criminal cases to various agencies.

As of this month, no law-enforcement agency has taken action against Rodrick and Oesterblad over the websites, records show.

Rodrick, 52, and Oesterblad, 53, both have felony convictions on fraud-related charges.

Rodrick pleaded guilty in 1993 to selling illegal cable-television descramblers with fraudulent intent. In 1996, he was sued in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for his role in an Alaskan Ponzi scheme that cost investors as much as $50 million. A final judgment of $58,900 was entered against him. Court records do not show any payments were made.

Oesterblad pleaded guilty in 1992 for his part in a frequent-flier scam operated out of his family's Phoenix travel agency and spent 10 months in a federal prison.

Websites' employee said a dispute over money spurred him to testify in civil cases

The sex-offender websites were built using data copied directly from official law-enforcement websites, Call 12 found.

Eric Souhrada, a former Tempe software developer and computer engineer now living in California, said in an interview last year that he designed the sex-offender websites for Rodrick as subscription services, not as vehicles to target offenders for cash.

Souhrada said he designed the sex-offender sites from data he scraped from official registries maintained by law-enforcement agencies across the country. He said he reformatted the data into his own templates that Rodrick used for websites such as Offendex.

Oesterblad said the origin of the sex-offender sites goes back to 1999when he and Rodrick owned an Internet-based subscription service to access public records called Spyheadquarters.com. The name was later changed to Onlinedetective.com.

In 2006, the demand for subscriptions to search public records plummeted. Oesterblad said he and Rodrick didn't have another company together until 2011, when Rodrick approached him about a new website called Offendex.com to collect money from sex offenders.

Oesterblad said Rodrick was in the middle of a divorce case and asked him to register the new company with the Arizona Corporation Commission and open bank accounts.

"I did not know then, but believe now, that Rodrick established the name Web Express Ventures in order to hide income and other assets from his estranged wife," Oesterblad wrote in his federal court declaration.

At its peak, the sex-offender websites were bringing in an estimated $35,000 per month, Oesterblad said during last month's interview.

Oesterblad described his role in the website as a contract employee. He said Rodrick paid him 50 percent commission on money he collected from sex offenders through the removal process. He also said his job was to communicate with offenders.

"I'm the one who had to talk to the angry perps on the phone," Oesterblad said, adding that he has no regrets about firing off angry e-mails to offenders and rubbing their faces in the graphic details of their crimes. "I was the zealot."

By the end of 2012, Offendex was getting a lot of negative attention on the Internet and elsewhere. Days after Call 12 for Action sought interviews with Rodrick in December, he changed the name of the site to SORArchives.

Oesterblad said the real blow for the company came after complaints from around the country about similar websites led credit-card and payment-processing companies to reject payments on behalf of the websites. Google also changed its formulas so the sites were buried on the Web.

"Rodrick subsequently learned that he and the SORArchives.com website was under investigation for possible criminal activities," Oesterblad said in his declaration.

Oesterblad said that Rodrick told him he learned Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery's office had opened a criminal investigation into the websites.

No criminal charges have been filed.

Oesterblad said he decided to testify in the civil cases after he and Rodrick had a dispute over $808. Oesterblad said Rodrick refused to pay him for work he did on the websites and then pushed him out of a future project.

He said he felt betrayed and as if he had wasted two years of his life.

"I agreed to talk to everybody. I agreed to tell the truth," Oesterblad said in the interview. "I can acknowledge my naivete and stupidity for being a patsy."

In fall 2012, Call 12 for Action received a complaint call from a consumer alleging that a Valley-based company was engaged in online extortion. Reporter Robert Anglen set out to investigate those claims and found that sex-offender websites were demanding money to remove profiles from the Web. To trace the operators of those websites, Anglen combed through hundreds of pages of court records, business filings and property records.

Friday, March 14, 2014

Stick with small words, Valerie Parkhurst

Valerie Parkhurst is, without a doubt, the dumbest blogger on the Internet. Val is so bad, the only time you will find proper grammar, punctuation, and spelling is if something is pasted to her blog from an outside source.

So I had to laugh at the following comment Valigaturd posted on a random article while attacking the owner of this blog:

"Hate to break it to you, but even after all your blustering your still the lower that a pustular ridden, anal expulsive narcissus who has never come to terms with the fact your short history on earth can be compared to snake feces and not much else."

It is hilarious listening to an idiot try to use big words, especially when she cannot use the word "you're" instead of "your."

"Your still the lower that a..." Serious, fix this grammar issue! At any rate, I'm sure the rest of the insult was written by someone else. Lets look at the following insults.

Pustular ridden = zit faced. Seriously? Are we in junior high? But no matter, even if we were, I was lucky enough to have avoided the curse of acne during that time, much less today.

"Anal expulsiveness" refers to Freud's stages of psychosexual development, which is considered a tad obsolete. But, what Val failed to realize is there are positive traits such as creativity, generosity, and self-confidence, but since my sexual habits have little to do with feces, I'm sure Val overlooked that minor detail,  because the ability to comprehend the written word is a concept that continues to elude her. No doubt, I'm sure she was just excited to use the words "anal."

Narcissus = A daffodil. I suppose on some deep level Val could have theoretically invoked the Greek myth of Narcissus, but they would be an assumption that Val is a deep thinker. Val

So I'm a generous zit faced flower, according to Valerie Parkhurst. Way to go, American Educational System. This is the typical uneducated, racist, right-wing teabagger that fills the attack sites.

Wednesday, March 12, 2014

Idaho vigilante thug Bradley Houser gets a slap on the wrist from brutally beating a 69-year old man

A brutal beating and this guy gets to go some bullshit diversion program? If he beat a homosexual for being gay, he would have had the book thrown at him.

http://magicvalley.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/man-sentenced-for-felony-battery-on-registered-sex-offender/article_005bfffa-a970-11e3-a0cc-0019bb2963f4.html

Man Sentenced for Felony Battery on Registered Sex Offender
7 hours ago  •  By Alison Gene Smith alismith@magicvalley.com(0) Comments

Police: Men Broke into Hotel, Beat up Sex Offender

TWIN FALLS • Police say two men broke into a hotel room and beat a man who is a registered sex offender. Read more

TWIN FALLS - A man convicted of felony aggravated battery for beating a 69-year-old man was sentenced Monday in Twin Falls County District Court.

Bradley Houser, 35, was sentenced to the state's retained jurisdiction program. He will attend the Correctional Alternative Placement Program through the Idaho Department of Correction.

After the program, a judge can either put Houser on probation or send him to prison for an underlying sentence of three to 15 years.

Houser was also ordered to reimburse the county public defender's office for $500 and was ordered to pay victim's restitution of $1,257.44.

Police said Houser beat the man because he is a registered sex offender.

A police report by Twin Falls police officer Samir Smriko gives this account:

Just before 10:30 p.m. Aug. 23, police went to the Super 7 Motel at 320 Main Ave. E. following a battery call.

As police entered the hotel room they saw Rick Perkins, 69, washing blood off his head and arms. Perkins had a 2-inch gash on his forehead and multiple cuts in other places.

Perkins told police that at about 10 p.m., two men came to his door and threatened him. Perkins recognized one from a previous encounter. The men said they were going to beat him up because of a past child sex abuse case.

In 2008, Perkins was convicted on six counts of lewd conduct with a minor younger than 16. He was sentenced to three years in prison and made parole in November 2011.

Perkins told police two men who smelled of alcohol initially left his room because other people were around but soon returned, closed the door behind them and started beating him.

The beating lasted for about 10 minutes. As he spoke to officers, Perkins grabbed his side in pain several times.

Paramedics arrived, and Perkins declined to be taken to a hospital but was informed he would need stitches on his head.

Police later found Houser in the 200 block of Alexander Street but couldn't locate the other man.

Houser was extremely intoxicated and had to use a fence to hold himself up, police said. He told them he and another man whom he didn't know went to the hotel and Perkins swung at them.

Sunday, March 9, 2014

Internet trolls warned: Expect arrest if you abuse people online...but only in the UK

Well cheerio and all that rot! The British are apparently trying to crack down on internet harassment. Now, I'm not British, nor can I say what the lsaws are there. I personally hope this extends to those so-called "paedo-hunters."

http://metro.co.uk/2014/02/26/internet-trolls-warned-expect-arrest-if-you-abuse-people-online-4324660/

Internet trolls warned: Expect arrest if you abuse people online
Wednesday 26 Feb 2014 8:10 pm

Internet trolls were today warned there was no hiding place from justice.

They were told to expect arrest if they threatened or abused people on social media sites.

Culture secretary Maria Miller said there was a ‘straightforward principle’ that rules which applied offline would also be applied online.

‘The internet isn’t a ‘‘Second Life’’,’ she said, ‘It isn’t something where different rules apply, where different behaviour is acceptable – it isn’t the wild west.’

Addressing the Oxford Media Convention, she said: ‘Whether it is images of child abuse or terrorist material we will use the full force of the law, national and international, to take down that content and pursue the perpetrators.

‘If you vilely insulted, or threatened to attack someone in person on the street, you do so expecting to be arrested and charged. The same already applies on social media.’

Referring to the recent jailing of a man and a woman who subjected feminist campaigner Caroline Criado-Perez to online abuse, Ms Miller said ‘being online does not mean the law doesn’t apply to you’. She added: ‘Last year, 2,000 people were prosecuted for sending electronic communications that were grossly offensive or menacing.’

Ms Miller told the audience ‘the veil of anonymity the internet provides may be valuable but does not give licence to insult, cheat or exploit.’

Taking aim at illegal downloads, she added: ‘If you wanted to see a film or listen to a CD, you wouldn’t sneak into a shop and steal it off the shelf, so why do the online equivalent and download it illegally?

‘It’s about good citizenship… as well as what’s legal and what’s not.’