MySpace’s five dumbest criminals
The reason why many criminals get caught is because they’re dumb, and as you’re about to see, MySpace has more than its fair share of dumb criminals.
Here are my pick of five dumb criminals who now wish MySpace never existed.
1. Heather Ann Tucci – criminal vehicular homicide
Heather Tucci (pictured), 18, of White Burr Lake, Minnesota, was pleading not guilty to two counts of criminal vehicular homicide for driving a car involved in an accident that resulted in the deaths of two teenage boys, when she decided to write the following on her MySpace profile (which has since been deleted, but you can see it here):
“I just want to let everyone know August 19 2006 Joe Renner and Joe Shafer died and me and Samatha were hurt. I’m sure a lot of you really don’t give a **** about me. Fine whatever you have your reasons I don’t blame you but really think about it. Both of them knew what they were getting in to. Yes it’s my fault because I was the driver but think about how many of you did what I did. … Now don’t get me wrong I take full responsability for everything that happened, but when you sit and say everything your saying think about what you probley did the day before that or maybe that night. You all take that risk. I never though it was gonna happen to me and it did. I learned from that I lost two very good friends of mine and a lot of people did.”
Tucci’s attorney only heard about the online confession when the local paper rang him for a comment.
Lesson learnt: Don’t confess to a crime you’re pleading not guilty to on your MySpace profile.
2. Christopher Chapanar – parole violator
San Jose parole violator Christopher Chapanar, 23, was caught after viewers of the cable TV show “Fugitive Watch” recognized him from his MySpace profile.
The executive producer of Fugitive Watch, Steve Ferdin, was quoted as saying that “this is the first time we’ve caught a fugitive with his own Web site”.
Chapanar had served time in prison for trying to run someone over with his car.
Lesson Learnt: If you’re on the run from the law, trying to hide from creditors, or trying to cheat, don’t advertise yourself on MySpace.
3. Shaun Harrison and Saverio Mondelli – extortion
It never ceases to amaze me how far people will go to make money. Take the story of Shaun Harrison, 19, and Saverio Mondelli, 20, of New York, who tried to extort $150,000 from MySpace.
Straight out of high school, the two set up a business which offered code that tracked users who visited a MySpace page. The code which they sold for $30 on their website, myspaceplus.com, would collect personal information, e-mail contacts, and IP addresses; using this data, one could potentially find further information such as a individual’s address or telephone number.
After a year of operation, Mondelli and Harrison claimed to have over 85,000 registered users of their tracking program.
MySpace had recently contacted the two with a notice to cease and desist; however, the New York lads told MySpace that “they would not cease and they would not desist, and they were developing a new tracker they could not block,” said Jeffrey McGrath, deputy district attorney for Los Angeles County.
The two men decided to reach an agreement with Myspace; the deal was to offer a “consulting service” to Myspace for $150,000 and, in addition, they would no longer offer the tracking service to their customers.
To their surprise, MySpace agreed; however, it was only part of an undercover sting run by Los Angeles District attorney investigators and the Secret Service.
In May of 2006, the two took flight to LA to collect their $150,000, but ended up being arrested by undercover agents instead.
Lesson learnt: Don’t screw with Rupert Murdoch
4. Unnamed father and step mother drug users – child abuse
A 12-year-old Florida girl was given cocaine and marijuana by her father and stepmother on several occasions while she was visiting them at their home in Kent Country during the Christmas/ New Year period, according to Maryland State Police.
The girl wrote about what happened on her MySpace profile.
Her mother was suspicious about what happened during the visit, so she decided to read her daughter’s MySpace profile, which reinforced her suspicions.
The mother confronted the daughter, who confirmed the story she had posted on MySpace. As a result the girl’s father and step mother were arrested on child abuse charges by the Maryland State Police.
Lesson learnt: Don’t give drugs to children with MySpace profiles (not a good idea at any time actually).
5. Andrew Lubrano – registered sex offender using MySpace to meet teenagers
Wired reporter Kevin Poulsen’s coding skills led to the arrest of sexual deviant Andrew Lubrano.
Poulsen wrote a 1000 line script that automatically searched MySpace profiles for registered sex offenders. He soon found 39-year-old Andrew Lubrano, who was using MySpace to meet teenage boys, making comments such as “Thanks for the ass, I mean add”.
Lubrano had been arrested for sex crimes against children on three occasions; his third arrest leading to a nine-year prison term.
Poulsen’s script searched MySpace’s member ship rolls for 385,932 registered sex offenders in 46 states, which had been obtained from the Department of Justice’s National Sex Offender Registry. He searched first and last names, limiting results to a five mile radius of the offender’s registered post code.
Poulsen ultimately found 744 sex offenders on MySpace. Any parent will find this statistic quite chilling, and don’t forget that this only includes really stupid sex offenders. More cunning offenders will have been much more discreet.
Poulsen wrote a very interesting story about how he wrote the code and about the subsequent arrest of Lubrano — you can read it here.
Lesson learnt: Registered sex offenders should stay away from MySpace (obviously they should also stay away from kids)
We all know the world is full of dumb criminals; just go to MySpace to find them.
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October 13th, 2007
How could you forget Scott Shefelbine? MySpace sex predator who kept on preying on young gurls even after being arrested.
October 13th, 2007
Girls even.
October 17th, 2007
Regarding Lubrano – So what that there are registered sex offenders at MySpace? There are probably thousands upon thousands of all sorts of criminals there, it’s a social networking tool, open to everyone. Considering the amount of registered users on MySpace, I’d say 744 people does in no way represent a statistical deviance.
October 25th, 2007
Tom you sound like a sex offender.
October 26th, 2007
There have been a lot of news reports about MySpace users because they are so stupid and egotistical that they have to share their criminal activities and let everyone know how smart they “think” they are. I don’t have a myspace acct. wouldn’t want one. I journal on a different site that I really like. Lots of nice and talented people there.
December 15th, 2007
There is tons and tons of bad dumb azz people on myspace and all over the internet. Thats why you don’t trust nobody on-line unless you know them in person. People that fall for those type things are complete dumb ass’s.
I have to admit though that all the time in effort we spend on-line, there should be better ways to teach people the safety of the internet. All the money the internet company’s make, they should put a big amount of it into schools to teach the youngsters how to be safe on-line. “and for that matter” = all the non computer literate people out there some how. Maybe like have a program on computers that when you first buy one and hook it up it goes through a whole routine with you before you can actually use it and have test at the end so that the computer knows that the person did not just Christmas tree the test. That would probably help a lot of people out, but to bad damn Bill Gates doesn’t give a shit about that. :/
March 3rd, 2008
Somewhat it doesn’t surprise me how damn stupid people can be while using the worst made social website in the world, The coding is shit, the pervs are everywhere and people never check if their messages are hacked or not, They all get what they Deserve.
March 12th, 2008
Power to Tom, but not to nasty sex offenders.
I have a myspace and use it everyday.
Thankfully I’ve never been “stalked” or anything.
March 15th, 2008
If you do something illegal you want to tell everyone about it. Its a stronger urge than needing a cigarette.
March 27th, 2009
pretty stupid to put urself into a problem that makes ur life worse