Facebook and the Daily Mail

There's a fascinatingly convoluted blog post today entitled "Time for a referee between Facebook and the Daily Mail" by Dan Sabbagh.  This was apparently related to a possible lawsuit about a Daily Mail headline that said "How many victims of Facebook sex gang?"  When pressed, the Daily Mail changed its wording of the headline, but refused to apologize.

In early 2010, the Daily Mail claimed that a man posing as a 14-year-old girl who had created a profile on Facebook had been approached "within seconds" by older men who wanted her to perform a "sex act" in from of them.  Turned out that the author had actually created the profile on a different social network that had nothing to do with Facebook.  Oops.

In a nutshell, I'm not convinced that there's any need for a referee here, but some basic fact-checking from the Daily Mail might be a good start.

One Weekend, Five Accounts

Marcos Teia's apparently had about five accounts this weekend, which is busy even for him.  The Marcos Alves account got bombed sometime on Friday.

Then he was "Marcos Silva."

After that got shut down, he was "Marcos Gomes."  76 friends?  I bet that's more than he's ever had in his real life.  Let's face it, normal people don't find child pornography endearing.

That account got nuked too, and he came back as "Marcos Vasques."  If he has to buy a bunch of pedo friends by constantly posting child pornography, that's pretty pathetic.

And there's another account known as "Lisa Teia."

The Boy From Brazil

In his novel Sacrifice, Andrew Vachss says, "Slime can slide, but it can't hide."  This describes Marcos Teia perfectly.

Marcos Teia's profiles have been shut down so often that he's set up a number of them with different names and avatars.  In the past, he's been "Marcos Souza" and "Marcos Robson" as well as "Marcos Teia."  He's diversified even further, appearing as Marcella Souza, Servidor Teia,  Marcos Teia Servidor, and Marcos Teia.  But his most active profile at the moment would be "Marcos Garcia."

So it's probably not surprising that Marcos Teia would be an admin of a private group called "xxxpedo" along with "Marcos Fernandes", presumably another one of Teia's alter egos.  According to our sources, this is one of the worst private groups they've ever seen.  In addition to posting numerous vile images, Marcos Teia is apparently offering child porn videos for sale. 

Another One Bites the Dust

Jerry Cannon, the user we knew as "Terry Lewis" has also been arrested.  He was quite persistent, and more than a little creepy.  This is his profile picture, which was recycled in more than one account.  We were aware of 7 accounts, and the news story said that he had 13.

A lot of the users on his friends list had profile pictures depicting girls and young women, and he was quite chatty.  He kept a collection of child pornography in his private albums and apparently hoped if he granted his friends access, they'd reciprocate by taking "private" pictures of themselves.  Of course, most of his Facebook friends probably weren't the attractive young girls in the Facebook profile photos.  One of them was an author investigating human trafficking, and another turned him into the FBI.  Then again, it's also unlikely that he really owned a "multi-million dollar buisness."

We contacted Kentucky ICAC about him, and they were responsive and professional.  However, the FBI had begun an investigation when the other Facebook user reported him.  It turns out that "Terry Lewis" was actually Jerry L Cannon, formerly the pastor at God's House in Dry Ridge, KY.  The news story is at http://blog.al.com/live/2011/02/kentucky_pastor_facebook_pornography.html and the criminal complaint is at http://www.scribd.com/doc/49175841/tlewis .

John Wilson Arrested

Via Bangor Daily News, John Wilson of Greenbush, ME was arrested yesterday on child pornography charges.

John Wilson, 23, was arrested Thursday afternoon on a charge of possessing sexually explicit material, a Class C felony, after state police raided his Middle River Road home and seized his computers and cell phones, Maine Department of Public Safety spokesman Stephen McCausland said Friday.

“They found [sexually explicit] images immediately and then seized the equipment,” he said. He said Wilson’s hard drives now are being analyzed by the Maine State Police Computer Crimes Unit in Vassalboro.

According to McCausland, investigators believe that Wilson posted child pornography on as many as 15 Facebook accounts he created over the past year. Wilson’s alleged criminal activity was reported to authorities by personnel from the social networking site as well as members of the public over the past month.

He didn't seem like the subtle type.

Examiner Article

We were recently mentioned in an Examiner article by Raymond Bechard, who has written extensively about human trafficking.

To be fair to Facebook, dealing with abusive accounts is a hard problem and they've been making some effort.  They've got a system in place that seems to be automatically nuking a number of profiles.  However, the bad guys just come right back with new accounts, and I'd doubt that there's any mechanism in the "auto-nuke" system to report predatory users to law enforcement.  If not, that could mean that the only consequences some of the people are experiencing for soliciting and posting child pornography are having a Facebook account shut down.

Here's an interesting article from last year about Facebook not notifying Australian LE about child pornography:
http://www.smh.com.au/technology/facebook-failed-to-tell-police-about-paedophile-porn-ring-20100826-13ual.html
It says that someone had sent Facebook 10 messages telling them about the CP rings and nothing had happened.  That was likely more about the inability to process user messages than deliberate refusal to do anything about child pornography.

Facebook's reporting mechanisms are limited.  For example, imagine you see a profile of of a man hinting at sexually abusing his daughter.  How do you go about reporting that to Facebook?  Note that there is no "child exploitation" option anywhere.  If the profile picture contains actual nudity or pornography, that's reportable, but if they're just using a photo of a child to signal their interests, no dice.  "Inappropriate profile information" is limited to hate or violence, and there's nothing for profiles that refer to pedophilia or child porn.  There's also no free text field that allows you to provide additional information.

Realistically, Facebook has millions of users.  If you assume that 1% of accounts are abusive in some way but there are 100 million accounts ... well, that's potentially 1 million abusive accounts.  That's why Facebook wants to automate as much as it can -- they have to.  However, I would like to see an improved reporting system that allowed users to specifically flag child exploitation and other things that are problems but don't fit neatly into their existing system.  For example, how would you go about reporting a profile or page that seemed to be advertising an escort service (human trafficking)?

Paolo Ghelardini

Who was this "Paolo Constantino" who clicked "like" on the comment about him raping young girls?

Well, he looks a lot like a guy called Paolo Gherlardini, an Italian illustrator.  Let's take a look at his profile.

He even lists "paologhelardini" in his contact information.

He argues that Romania must be a civilized country because the government provides cable TV with porn.  In a recent CNN blog post, David Batstone called Romania a "global center for human trafficking."

According to the Wikipedia article on Eva Ionesco, there were some controversial erotic photographs taken of her when she was five years old.

He is proud of his involvement with "Lolita" magazine, which reportedly rewarded readers who submitted child porn for publication with free magazines.

He also talked about his time in the Netherlands.

"I recall Red Light Center in Amsterdam, The Amstel, Casa Rosso, Rokin Road...Oh...what a fine country is Holland, I love, I miss! Pity Pornoshops now are deleted......I know!  But in 1969 I remember you said_ let‘s live pornography...then when we shall be satisfied she will desapppear! You right! First Lolita Magazine and Chick by my lost friend editor Joop Wilhelmus born in Dordrecht (and killed in Rotterdam 1997 by a bastard catholic), I was one of his photographers and scienist for Super8 movies! My glory, my dream! This is freedom, this is civilisation! I am proud of you dutch people! Long life to you!"

"Lella" wasn't his only victim.  He also bragged about exploiting other young girls.

"She is one of my best lilmodels! Now she is 10 yo, but she began to do sex since 2 ys! She likes so much analsex and piss!"

"Barbara my model! She began sex at only 4 years! Now she is 17, a real slut nymphomaniac!"

Given Romania's problems with human trafficking and the number of vulnerable children there, Ghelardini could probably find a number of young victims.

"Ls magazine" also published child pornography, and seems to be a popular child pornography keyword.

He thinks that the (redacted) image posted by Marcos Teia would be better without the swimsuit.

He can't seem to get enough child pornography.

Many of the child pornography traders have gotten kicked off Facebook and returned with new accounts.  Ghelardini is no exception.

His next account used the screen name "Paulo Constantinescu." 

"My alter-ego Paul Constatin banned! Ahahah!! I don‘t care a rap!  Problem is for my friends notfor me because I have an arkiv with + of 10.000 pthc pics and 1000 vids! My mails no one, nteiher God, can delete! Fuck asshole Facebook ad idiots snakes fake friends!"

He seemed to think that email would be a safer approach:

"If you wanna watch them in sexual activity no limits call my mails!  Proud to satisfy you! By mail we are in security!"

Ghelardini has a twisted approach to theology and philosophy.  Many others would consider producing child pornography to be a mortal sin.

The comment where he invokes the name of God has to be one of the grossest violations of the Second Commandment I've ever seen.

Will Romanian law enforcement ever do anything about Ghelardini?  We can only hope.

Update: there have been some anonymous comments posted claiming that these Facebook profiles were created by somebody else.  One of these accounts posted this image, which looks a lot like him:

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgC70e0w43SYxfEtfESfcN_00W6e1XtiLOh2FwWWmujVMSBwqHy6uojf7uFtLXifAxCJAIeM_nHMzyIP44YYHPt3pbcpGJlO2hLihhOxmfNnOY73-gTL4qNRW33jeon5PpHe8FJH_khASny/s1600/paolo_yuk2.png

For obvious reasons, we redacted the image, but it's hard to understand how an imposter would have gotten ahold of the original.

Hardcore

As of 8:00 yesterday evening, the closed group "hardcore" had 30 members.  The description was "for the true pedos that love little girls please post pics, vids, and stories."

The Pain Players

There are numerous profiles with obvious sadomasochistic interests, but most of these folks seem to play only with other consenting adults.  However, as we saw in an earlier entry, that may not always be the case.

Harald Schneider expresses interest in "spanking my kids" and a number of other things, and his "About" information apparently translates to "Family.  3 children.  Strictly."  His profile photo (which is redacted here) shows a young girl bent over a table.

Below is his photo album, which is also redacted here.  The image in the middle seemed to be especially popular with his friends.

Harald's friend Max Lehrer had quite a collection of drawings.  The one below displayed a Bible verse and attracted some obviously prurient comments.  This isn't too surprising; Amazon shows that some "Christian" books on child-rearing that advocate corporal punishment are popular with the BDSM crowd.

Photos Online

A recent article in NYMag discussed pressure on junior high and high school girls to share racy pictures of themselves on the internet.  Let's take a look at where some of those pictures could end up.

As you may have guessed, many of the pedophiles and child porn traders we've covered seem to have a low-bandwidth connection to reality.  A number of the profile pictures on friends lists and groups depict attractive young women.  Are most of these users really teenage girls who are eager to share child pornography with men online?  Probably not.  Some people who had used the screen names "Stephanie Stewart", "Lisa King", "Jenna Foltz", "Amy Farmer", "Buffy Tanner", "Katy Ellis", "Katy Cat", and "Katy Kat" were recently indicted for using Facebook groups to share child pornography.  The indictment also refers to a "Jodie Green" account.  

How many of these defendants are female?  None.  The American defendants are James Paul Byrd, David Large, Brian Slott, Daniel Slott, and Henry Wright.  In fact, Brian and Daniel Slott are registered sex offenders in Wisconsin.  "Jodie Green" was actually Ian Green, a British sex offender who has already been sentenced to prison for his role in the groups.  It's not hard to guess how these people found the photos of adolescents and young women that they used in their profile photos.  

To any middle or high school students who may be reading this, we'd seriously encourage you to think about what could happen to photos before you send or post them.  Once they're circulating, they're out of your control.  Guys aren't exempt either; we've seen a number of pedophiles using photos of boys to signal their interests.

We've also seen these people solicit nude photos from girls they believe to be underage.  If they got one, they would almost certainly trade it with other like-minded people.  Child pornography is a largely a barter-based economy, and images that had not previously been circulated would be valuable currency.  They like webcams too, especially since many of them know how to capture streaming video and convert that into video to trade.

Below are some screencaps of users we've seen recently who have probably borrowed photos from unsuspecting young women.   Whoever took that cellphone photo of herself probably would not be happy to discover that "Steve Wesley" found it.

This is "Alaina Loli," who's been deleted and come back numerous times with new accounts.  Is this character really a 13-year-old girl?  We doubt it.  We'd guess that "Alaina Loli" is actually a skeezy guy who found the cellphone photo of the girl in a bikini somewhere and used it to pose as a woman.  Just a hunch.

Exploited

Mark Trotter's profile photo shows a Photoshopped Pedo Bear groping some blond girls.  His interests include "PTHC", "Lolita", "All Children Should Be Spanked", along with the age range of his preferred victims.

The twins in the photo were once known as "Prussian Blue," a young duo who performed hate music.  Their mother is April Gaede, is described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a "neo-Nazi stage mom."  A 2010 article has more information about Gaede and the twins.

Marcos Teia

Marcos Teia is a legend in his own mind.  He's created groups dedicated to himself and has come back numerous times with new accounts after being kicked off Facebook.  Below is a screenshot of one of his recently shut down incarnations.  He's back with new accounts, of course.

The self-aggrandizement would be almost comical if it weren't for his large and ugly collection of child pornography.  But it has bought him a certain fame.  Teia has been featured in two articles by Raymond Bechard: "Federal Crimes on Facebook" and "A $50 Billion Company - The Perfect Place for Human Trafficking."  In one article, Bechard describes material posted to a private Facebook group: "These photographs were explicit images of girls appearing to range in ages between 3 and 9 years. The images showed these girls involved in vaginal, oral, and anal sex acts. Some are bound with duct tape."  This is consistent with accounts I have heard from other sources, and I also found it unsurprising that Marcos Teia would be a member of that group.

Dave Abby

Here's Dave Abby, another recently booted Facebook user.  According to our source, he wasn't joking about the "homemade porn" or "k9 love" interests.  Nor about "My 2 Daughters."  If this is indeed true, I hope that he is executed investigated.

The Dearly Departed

Facebook has taken to "auto-nuking" accounts based on keywords in profiles, associations with other users who get booted, and probably some other factors as well.  This isn't too surprising, given that there are hundreds of millions of accounts on Facebook.  Below is one user account who got shut down, and it's not too hard to guess why.

However, we hope that some of the most alarming users are getting reported to law enforcement, rather than just kicked off Facebook.  In the picture below, we have blacked out the face of the prepubescent girl, but we've left the user's comment about her unredacted.

Keeping It Classy

Some of the problem children like to use closed or private groups to share material.  Below is an example.  Gee, wonder what those folks might be interested in?

Canine Bad Citizen

Jane Zimmer lists "bend over take that knot", "a dogs tail get on ur hands & knees", "extreme insertions", and "playing with my dog."  For the blissfully unaware, "taking the knot" apparently refers to a woman having sex with a dog.

She also apparently has granddaughters.