DOCUMENT: Internet, Crime

Who's Following Your Daughter On Facebook

Feds: Truck driver coerced naked photos from teen girl

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Facebook Photo Threats

JANUARY 11--Proving once again that Facebook is overflowing with perverts targeting your daughter, a truck driver who masqueraded online as a teenage girl is facing federal charges for coercing a Montana minor into sending him naked photos of herself.

According to investigators, 53-year-old Theodore Castine--lurking behind a phony profile page in the name of “Kerry White”--last year contacted the Montana girl, then 14, via an unsolicited Facebook message. He asked the girl “to exchange ‘bikini’ pictures,” and provided her with a cell phone number to which the images could be texted. He dared her to send the photos, noting that she was “hot.”

A check of the “Kerry White” Facebook profile--which remains online--reveals that while its friends list is not publicly available, a dozen photos of “White” are on the page. The identity of the girl in the photos (one of which shows her in a bikini top) is unknown. A screen grab from the “White” profile can be seen above.

The Facebook page of the Montana girl contacted by Castine also remains online--and it offers clues as to why she was targeted. The teen’s profile name includes a variation on the phrase “Fuck you,” lists “flirting” and “partying” as her interests, and, as seen below, claims that she works as a “Hooker” on “the corner ;).” On her MySpace page, the girl includes her cell phone number and refers to having a “pimp.”

The Montana girl told investigators that after she was initially contacted via Facebook, “White” sent her photos of two young girls “naked and exposing their genitalia in a lewd and lascivious manner,” according to a recent U.S. District Court filing. “White,” she added, was “demanding photographs in the same fashion to be sent via picture messaging.”

The teenager further explained that she “tried to avoid sending the subject naked photographs of herself and tried to get the subject to stop asking for the photographs or stop talking to her, but the subject refused.” She added that the subject warned that if she did not send the illicit photos, “he was going to find her and she wouldn’t like what was going to happen when the subject found her.”

Fearful of refusing the man’s demands, the Montana girl “took two naked photographs of herself” and sent them via her cell phone to the man’s number, which carried a North Carolina area code. Castine lives in Mooresville, a town 20 miles north of Charlotte.

Soon after sending the photos, the girl spoke with a school resource officer and  revealed that she had been receiving threatening and harassing messages from “White.” At this point, it was likely the student realized that her tormentor was not a fellow teenage girl.

In short order, an investigator assumed the teen’s identity and continued exchanging text messages with the suspect, who began “threatening to share the photos the girl sent initially by posting them on the Internet.” In subsequent e-mails, the subject told the girl that she would have to send new nude photos and a video to get the harassment to stop.

When the new images were not sent, the suspect began sending threatening e-mails to the girl’s Yahoo account. “Fuck, today. Get them done. Borrow a camera,” read one October e-mail. Another warned, “Your friends will get them if you don’t send more. Now.”

In a further bid to pressure the girl to provide “20 pix and vid,” the suspect--who investigators had identified as Castine--warned that he would send the two naked photos of the girl to a male friend of hers. To drive home this threat, the suspect’s e-mail message included “four photographs apparently taken from the girl’s Facebook page which had her and a young male giving the impression they were a couple.”

In mid-October, an FBI agent approached Castine and dialed the phone number that was originally provided to the Montana teenager by “White.” Castine’s cell phone rang. After waiving his Miranda rights, he admitted to owning the phone and confessed to “exchanging pictures” with the Montana girl (whose age, he knew, was 14).

Castine also copped to “using the Internet and befriending other ‘underage girls.’” He then asked to speak with a lawyer.

Pictured in the above mug shot, Castine has been indicted by a federal grand jury for sexual exploitation of children, a felony. Along with using “threats and coercion” to obtain naked photos from the Montana victim, Castine was “found in possession of other child pornography depicting a minor under age 10,” according to a court filing. As such, he is being held without bail.

A federal judge last month granted a defense request for Castine to undergo a psychiatric or psychological examination while in Bureau of Prisons custody. In a motion, Castine’s attorney noted that his client “exhibits mental and emotional problems which should be addressed,” and that he may be “mentally incompetent” to stand trial. (4 pages)