Brooklyn Perv Used Facebook to Coerce Girls

Yet another story about how social networking sites can be dangerous! And this one involves a Brooklyn man who posed as various female Facebook members' friends to get them to somehow give him nude pictures and force them to be his friend. The Post reports that 20 year old Elvin Chaung was charged with identity theft, computer trespass and tampering, coercion and grand larceny after it turned out he was using his Facebook account to conning students at Hunter College, Columbia University and other schools. Chaung's plan:

- Learn as much about a Facebook member as possible, and then claim to be a friend using another account due to "computer problems"
- Then ask for photographs of the women in normal poses, then in bikinis or lingerie, saying he needed them for an art project
- Ask for a nude photograph, and if they wouldn't agree, he would threaten to "plaster the bikini or lingerie shots around their schools unless they complied"

Manhattan DA Robert Morgenthau said, "Students think that because they're on a secure Web site like Facebook that they're safe from online predators. They're not." We cannot wait for Dateline to do a "To Catch a Facebook Predator" show!

The Post has a graphic showing one conversation between Chaung and a victim. Sidebar: Instant messaging-speak makes us CRAZY.

Contact the author of this article or email tips@gothamist.com with further questions, comments or tips.

By Jen Chung in News on June 19, 2006 9:40 AM

Comments [rss]

chris

note to self, trying to pick up girls from the internet and making friends online utterly ruined by some scumbag social outcast. Really now, I met my best friend online who is of the opposite sex randomly by doing a similar interest search on aim back in 2000. If I tried that today she would have called me a liar or a perv and we never would have become friends. Stupid kid.

daysbeforeaol

ahhh, one yearns the days of IRC and teens were really teens.

why are they charging him with all those offenses?

Identity theft? Computer trespass? huh?

tampering, coercion AND Grand Larceny?

Kojak

Haha CAUGHT. Pervert

Let this be a lesson to anyone and everyone who feels like it’s a good idea to post all their information on myspace or something similar.

Facebook = Secure my ass. Anyone can create an account nowadays.

MissPinkKate

Why would anyone fall for this?

comicbookguy

Best Idea Ever!

Gotta say what's with these social networking sites that compel people to post things about themselves.

It will come back to haunt you.

Just like the Girls Gone Wild participants, I'm worried that one of them will be Head of HR at some corp.