Buster

An online relationship that began on a “sugar daddy” web site ended in a series of extortionate demands by a Florida woman who threatened to distribute nude photos sent to her by the 56-year-old male victim, according to investigators.

Stephanie Starling, 26, was arrested Monday in connection with her alleged shakedown of a married Las Vegas businessman identified in court records by his initials, “H.T.”

As detailed in a felony extortion complaint, Starling, seen at right, met “H.T.” on sugardaddyforme.com, a “dating” web site that matches women in need of money and men with said money. “H.T.” told FBI agents that he joined the site (which charges up to $53.85 a month) in mid-2012 and “began an online relationship” with Starling in September or October.

Starling, “H.T.” recalled, claimed to be a 21-year-old college student from Jacksonville. The photos she first shared with “H.T” actually depicted a blonde model who appeared in porno films. Starling is pictured above in an photo from her Facebook page.   

During their initial communications, “H.T.” voluntarily agreed to send Starling $7000 to cover “various school and living expenses.” The pair also exchanged “several revealing and nude photographs of each other.” But while “H.T” sent Starling explicit photos of himself, she sent naked images of another woman she found online.

Starling claimed she signed up to sugardaddyforme.com because she was “struggling to pay bills and feed” her young son. Starling, who said that “H.T.” “told me he wanted to have me as his side girlfriend,” told agents that she had relationships with “approximately five or six men” she met via the web site.

In late-November, after “H.T.” declined to send Starling any additional funds, she began threatening to send his naked photos to his family, employer, and various social networking sites. “H.T.” wired Starling an additional $1200 via Western Union after she assured him, “You have my word you’ll never hear from me again.”

That pledge lasted about three weeks. In a series of escalating threats, Starling warned “H.T.” that if he did not sent more money, “I’m messaging your wife.” Referring to money being sent to her, Starling texted, “I better have a tracking number by 6pm my time or I’m making you famous.”

In subsequent messages, Starling threatened to harm “H.T.” and his family. “I’m gonna come to Vegas,” she wrote, adding, “I will never fucking stop until I get my money or you die.” In one February 23 text to “H.T.,” Starling reported, “Stalking your Twitter now.” As seen on Starling’s Twitter page, she sent “H.T.” two messages that day: “found you” and “you should answer me back.”

After "H.T." contacted the FBI, agents opened an investigation in early-February. Investigators traced the extortion demands to Starling’s Jacksonville home, which they searched Monday. During the raid, Starling spoke with FBI agents and admitted sending “H.T.” threatening communications. “I will never do that again,” she said. “I know what I was doing was wrong.”

In a four-page handwritten confession, Starling said she was “in college aspiring to become a dentist” and was “sorry for the stress and pain I caused him.” She added, “I want to be able to go home to my son tonight.”

Starling, who was jailed following her arrest Monday, was scheduled today for a detention hearing in U.S. District Court in Jacksonville. If convicted of the extortion rap, she faces a maximum of 20 years in prison.

In one of the day’s dumbest April Fool’s Day pranks, a Waffle House worker allegedly called 911 to falsely report that the eatery had just been robbed.

According to police, Susan Alexandria Tinker, 20, called around 6 AM to claim that the Hampton, Virginia eatery had been robbed. However, after officers arrived at the purported crime scene, they came to a different conclusion.

“Responding officers investigated the incident and determined that the complaint was a fabrication in celebration of ‘April Fool’s Day,'” investigators noted in a media release.

Tinker, pictured in the above mug shot, was arrested for falsely summoning police. If convicted of the misdemeanor count, she faces a maximum of 12 months in jail and a fine of up to $2500.

It is unclear how Tinker thought she could get away with the prank.

Meet James Watson.

The 31-year-old Virginia man fell asleep on his couch early Saturday after an evening of heavy drinking. While Watson was incapacitated, one of his roommates retrieved a permanent marker and drew a penis on Watson’s face.

When Watson awoke and discovered “male genitalia on his face,” he attacked his roommate, leaving the victim with “extensive injuries to his face,” according to an Arlington County Police report.

Arrested on a malicious wounding charge, Watson was booked into the county jail, where the above mug shot was taken. An examination of his left cheek reveals that remnants of the impromptu penis remained when Watson posed for his booking photo.

Why, yes, this has happened before.

Meet Crystal Frantzen.

The 28-year-old Tennessean was arrested and charged with prostitution after law enforcement received calls yesterday around noon about a woman performing oral sex on a man in the parking lot of a busy BP gas station.

After the Cadillac they were traveling in was pulled over about a mile from the service station, Frantzen told Sullivan County Sheriff’s Office deputies that she performed the sex act on the man in the car, Gary Tipton, "in exchange for a better deal" on the vehicle she intended to buy from the 58-year-old.

According to a sheriff’s spokesperson, neither Tipton--who does not appear to be affiliated with an authorized Cadillac dealership--nor Frantzen indicated what the 90's model Cadillac's asking price was or what discount Frantzen would be receiving for pleasuring the seller.

Tipton, pictured in the mug shot at left, was charged with patronizing a prostitute and drug possession after cops found pills without a prescription in his pocket. He bonded out of the county jail this morning after posting $2000 bond. Pictured above, Frantzen was arraigned today and released after posting $1000 bond.

Armed with confidential memos to Hillary Clinton that were stolen from the e-mail account of a former White House aide, a hacker has distributed some of the documents to a wide array of congressional aides, political figures, and journalists worldwide.

In a series of weekend e-mail blasts, the hacker known as “Guccifer” disseminated four recent memos to Clinton from Sidney Blumenthal, a longtime confidant of the former Secretary of State.

The 64-year-old Blumenthal, who worked as a senior White House adviser to President Bill Clinton, had his AOL e-mail account hacked last week by “Guccifer,” who has conducted similar illegal assaults against a growing list of public figures, including Colin Powell, relatives and friends of the Bush family, and a top United Nations official.

The hacker’s e-mails went to hundreds of recipients, though the distribution lists were dotted with addresses for aides to Senate and House members who are no longer in office. But many of the addresses to which the Blumenthal memos were sent are good (though it is unclear whether karl@rove.com is a solid address for the Republican mastermind).

Most of the e-mail recipients were sent four separate memos that were e-mailed to Clinton by Blumenthal during the past five months. Each memo dealt with assorted developments in Libya, including the September 11, 2012 attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi. One memo marked “Confidential” was sent to Clinton on September 12.

As TSG reported last week, after Blumenthal’s e-mail account was compromised, the hacker searched it for e-mails sent to Clinton, and further sorted the mail to segregate any attachment--like Word files--that were included in Blumenthal’s correspondence to Clinton. Many of these pilfered documents were memos to Clinton on foreign policy and intelligence matters.

While “Guccifer” appears to have downloaded many of these attachments, the hacker opted not to send the actual Word files to those on the e-mail blast list (likely as a security measure since the downloaded files could contain metadata that could lead to the hacker, who is the target of a mushrooming federal criminal investigation).

Instead, “Guccifer” copied the text from the four Blumenthal memos and pasted them into separate new files. The hacker then made screen grabs of the new files and e-mailed those to the names on the weekend distribution list. As seen above, “Guccifer” made sure, of course, to choose the despised Comic Sans font (and a pink background) when recreating the memos sent to Clinton by Blumenthal, who is pictured at left with the Clintons.

The e-mails this weekend appear to have been sent from the hacked AOL account of the wife of a Hollywood actor. This tactic, which “Guccifer” has previously employed, seems to be another attempt to further shield the hacker’s identity.

As for the location of “Guccifer,” that also remains a mystery. Though two IP addresses connected to the hacker’s recent online maneuvers have been traced to the Russian Federation, TSG has learned.  However, this could be indicative of nothing since hackers go to great lengths to obscure their trail via proxies, IP spoofing, and powerful anonymizing software like Tor.

“Guccifer,” though, did show some familiarity with the Russian media in Saturday’s e-mail blast. While the majority of the journalists to whom he sent the Blumenthal memos are based in the U.S., “Guccifer” also sent the documents (in a separate e-mail) to about two dozen reporters working for Russian outlets like Pravda, the Moscow Times, The St. Petersburg Times, and the RT news channel.

The domain name popefrancis.com is owned by a Chicago lawyer who registered the address nearly three years ago, but who today declined to answer questions about his apparent prescience (or luck).

Christopher Connors, 39, appeared taken aback when contacted at his office by a TSG reporter. He declined to say what led him to register popefrancis.com in April 2010, or what he had planned for the site (which is parked on a Go Daddy server).

Pictured at right, Connors is a solo practitioner who specializes in representing whistleblowers who seek to “report anonymously information about corporate bribery, fraud, or corruption to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.” In return, these whistleblowers can sometimes receive “substantial rewards” from the SEC, according to the web site for Connors’s law firm.

It does not appear that Connors is in the business of buying and selling web domains. While he has registered about 30 other addresses, each of them seems related to his legal practice (like sectipster.com and whistleblowerhub.com). None of these other domains contain the word “pope.”

Connors, a former assistant state’s attorney, is a 1999 graduate of Loyola University Chicago’s law school.