Mt. Washington Man Charged After Responding To Teen’s Ad On Craigslist:
This is a follow-up to the post I did about 38-year-old Mark Nernberg who responded to the personal ad of a 14-year-old boy.
According to police in Mt. Washington, PA the boy did, in fact, take out the personal ad on craigslist and it stated that he was looking for sex between consenting adults. However, police say that Nernberg knew the kid was underage.
Good job to the parents who allowed their kid to post this ad.
Mt. Washington man charged with sexual abuse of a minor:
Creepy child molester looking guy over there is 38-year-old Mark Nernberg of Mt. Washington, PA. He was arrested for…you guessed it…child molestation.
He allegedly responded to the 14-year-old boy’s personal ad on craigslist. I’ll get to that in a second.
Anyway, police found the pair in a park engaged in what police called “inappropriate activity”.
Now back to the personal ad. I’m not going to even try to guess why this kid placed a personal ad on craigslist but I think I have a good reason why. However where were this kid’s parents when he was posting a personal ad on craigslist?
Have you ever read the personals on craigslist? There are some pretty depraved people out there.
I bet you think I’m going to ask why wasn’t his personal ad flagged by the ‘community’ for being underage. Well, I just went over the craigslist TOU and I couldn’t find any kind of age restrictions on it.
Nice business practice.
This is a great article from the Philadelphia Inquirer about how MySpace’s ‘pact’ with the Attorneys General is pretty much useless. Who says so? Why, Pennsylvania Attorney General Tom Corbett says so.
That’s because the safety barriers it prescribes depend largely on MySpace subscribers’ truthfully reporting their ages when creating online profiles. And it offers no reliable means of identifying or policing the suspected millions who do not.
“I’ve been arguing this point for more than a year now,” said Pennsylvania Attorney General Tom Corbett, who considers the agreement more blueprint than panacea. “Age verification has been the number-one issue for us from the very beginning.”
Until that nut is cracked, no set of guidelines can keep 12-year-olds from registering their virtual selves as adults, or stop 60-year-old creeps from masquerading online as high school cheerleaders.
Yet none of the Attorneys General have come up with a realistic way on how to verify age on the internet.
The article also, at the very end, prescribes to common sense.
But police say the best security of all is a vigilant parent – one who knows a child’s passwords, monitors his online friends and activities, and keeps the computer in a public area of the home. Some even buy spyware that can record their kids’ online conversations and Web visits.
“A lot of parents don’t want to do that because they don’t want to invade their kids’ privacy,” said Montgomery County Detective Ray Kuter, an Internet-crime expert. “I say, ‘You are the parent. You need to decide what to do.’ “
“Parents,” Kuter said, “are the best monitoring program we know of.”
The police know this, why don’t the Attorneys General?
Larksville man charged in sex assault on teen:
28-year-old Jon Erik Frisvold of Larksville, Pa. was arrested this week for allegedly sexually assaulting a 15-year-old girl in his house on multiple occasions. It’s not known how Frisvold knew the girl, but he used MySpace to stay in contact with her.
The level of his alleged creepiness knows no bounds…
Frisvold told the girl to go to his bedroom and wait for him. He asked her to have sex and said to her: “It will be good for you and it will be good for me,” according to the criminal complaint.
The girl said she removed her shirt and pants but told Frisvold to stop because it hurt. Frisvold continued to attempt to have sex with the girl but stopped.
Frisvold drove the girl home telling her not to tell anyone, the criminal complaint says.
Sometime in October or November 2006, the girl said Frisvold contacted her by telephone and on myspace.com. After a conversation, he picked her up at the West Wyoming store and drove around the Back Mountain before returning to his residence with her.
He asked her to have sex, but the girl said no. He continued to ask her to have sex when she agreed.
After a brief encounter, the girl told him to stop. They got dressed and drove to a cafe in Wyoming.
In January, Frisvold again contacted the girl on the telephone and on myspace.com. He picked her up at the West Wyoming store, drove around in the Back Mountain and took her to his residence where he sexually assaulted her, the criminal complaint says.
A month later, Frisvold contacted the girl again on the telephone and on myspace.com. He told the girl he was bored and picked her up at the store in West Wyoming, and took her back to his residence where he assaulted her, police said in the criminal complaint.
Frisvold was released on $25K bail. I wonder if he’ll pull a Shefelbine.
I really hope that the kid in his profile pic isn’t his.
Craigslist.org a source of crimes:
It seems that other news outlets are picking up on how much crime goes on through craigslist. This is an article from the Pittsburgh Post Gazette that relates at least one story that I missed.
But sometimes, the questionable listings aren’t flagged — for instance, the one police say Brian Lee Nestor posted back in September.
According to an affidavit filed in his case in federal court, Mr. Nestor, 44, of Squirrel Hill, put a listing under Craigslist’s “Casual Encounters” section.
It read: “Anybody into family fun?” followed by, “bring your son and hang out with us.”
A Greensburg police officer who handles computer crimes for the jurisdiction found the ad on Sept. 9.
He responded to the posting, saying that “Family fun sounds great, reply with age, limits, a photo would be great.”
The police officer and Mr. Nestor corresponded through e-mail for several days. According to the affidavit, Mr. Nestor, who also solicited child pornography, became frustrated: “Look I’m tired of these endless e-mails. … I’m just looking to get with a boy discreetly.”
In one exchange, Mr. Nestor, who was previously investigated by the FBI but not charged for having thousands of images of child pornography on his computer, wrote that when they met, the two men would have to expose themselves to each other to ensure that neither was a cop.
He was arrested Sept. 14 and charged with coercion and enticement, as well as possession of child pornography. Mr. Nestor’s arraignment is scheduled for Tuesday.
So let’s add pedophilia and child molestation to the list of things that craigslist is helping to facilitate. craigslist’s mouthpiece Susan MacTavish Best had the usual to say…
…inappropriate ads…flagged by users…blah blah blah…
But I may be paraphrasing.
A lot of people think that newspapers, or old media if you will, have a vendetta against craigslist since they’ve taken a big chunk out of their newspaper’s revenue by not charging for classifieds. That may be true, but doesn’t old media still have a responsibility to report the news? And this my friends, is news that more people should be seeing.
Woman: Craigslist Ad Leads To Inappropriate Interview:
This is a new one to me, since people who place employment ads on craigslist have to actually pay for the ad. I guess you can’t even trust employment ads on the internet’s hive of scum and villainy.
PHILADELPHIA — A Conshohocken woman said she was just looking for work when an online ad on Craigslist caught her eye.
Aleshia Endy, 22, said she now hopes police catch the man who ran the ad.
“I thought it was a legit position. I really thought it was something, but now I’m grossed out,” Endy said.
Endy said the job ad on the nationwide Web site, Craigslist.com, appeared to be perfect for her.
“I responded to it, said apply for personal assistant/office manager, so I sent my picture and resume,” Endy said.
Endy said she later found out that when the author wrote “female preferred” and “obey instructions” in the ad, he meant it.
After responding to the ad, Endy called her potential employer, Eber Devine.
Endy said Devine told her he was moving from one office to another, so he wanted to set up the interview at the University of Pennsylvania campus at the Van Pelt Library.
“He met me outside. We went upstairs to where there’s, like, conference rooms,” Endy said.
Endy said, at first, everything seemed fine. She filled out an application and agreed to a background check, and he promised her a generous salary.
But right in the middle of the interview came the shocker.
“He told me, ‘I want you to stand up. Go walk around the room. Go stand in the corner. I want to look at your ass,’” Endy said.
Endy said she told him no, and when she started to walk away it became uncomfortable.
“He stood up. He came over and started touching my shoulders and my chest and got real close and started breathing on me heavily,” Endy said.
Endy said she pushed him away and left, but Devine had Endy’s cell phone number from the application and apparently was not finished talking.
“Yeah, Aleshia, I think you are an excellent candidate,” one message said.
“He called me about six times. I have it in my call log,” Endy said.
Endy contacted the NBC 10 Investigators and the police.
NBC 10’s Harry Hairston started looking into Devine’s background and found pages and pages of court records.
Court documents show Devine’s criminal history goes back as far as 1986.
NBC 10’s investigation turned up five different mug shots, some of which were taken between 2002 and December 2006.
The self-proclaimed CEO also has a laundry list of guilty pleas.
Records show he pleaded guilty to theft of leased property, unlawful use of a computer, forgery, and criminal conspiracy.
NBC 10 went to Devine’s Philadelphia home. The 38-year-old self-styled entrepreneur lives with his father.
Hairston asked Devine’s father if he knew anything about the ad on Craigslist.
“That’s something he’s doing. He’s a grown man. I don’t know anything about it,” Devine’s father said.
Hours after the visit, Devine called NBC 10. He wouldn’t go on camera, but he did admit to placing the ad on Craigslist, claiming to be the CEO of his own company and interviewing Endy.
Devine denies anything inappropriate happened during the interview,
That may be for a court to decide. The district attorney’s Office has issued a warrant for his arrest.
He’s facing charges of sexual harassment, false imprisonment, indecent assault, unlawful restraint and burglary.
“I just want him off the streets. I want the women out there to know what kind of person he is. I want him off the streets,” Endy said.
Police said they are looking for Devine.
And a spokeperson for Craigslist said illegal activity is forbidden on Craigslist by the company’s terms of use, and is not welcome on the site.
I can almost see the craigslist spokesperson winking as they said that.
Man Charged with Luring Teens on Myspace:
27 or 28-year-old Jerome Booker of West Philadelphia was arrested for luring teens to his apartment while posing as a teenage girl named Jasmine and promised the boys sexual favors.
Police are investigating to see if there have been any other victims.
A word of advice for teens from your Ol’ Uncle Trench. The hot girl on MySpace doesn’t really want to have sex with you.