Alleged abuse of anonymnity/pseudonymnity

["E. ALLEN SMITH" <EALLENSMITH@ocelot.Rutgers.EDU>]

        Someone's forgetting that it would be smart - and should be possible -
for the men in question also to be anonymous/pseudonymous. As it was, they
could have been, and were evidently too dumb. Edited for fair use.
        -Allen

>Kansas veterinarian extorts husbands on 'married but looking' chat line

>Copyright 1996 Nando.net
>Copyright 1996 The Associated Press

>(May 21, 1996 10:41 p.m. EDT) Men flirted shamelessly with "Rita" in 
>America Online's "Married But Looking" computer chat line. The typed chatter 
>often got steamy, and she even offered them provocative photos of herself.

>But some men found that "she" was a "he" -- with printed copies of their
>explicit exchanges and blackmail on his mind.

>Veterinarian Ron Hornbaker, 29, of Shawnee Mission, Kan., pleaded guilty to
>extortion Tuesday in a case that some say illustrates problems in the
>unpoliced Internet. He faces two years in prison and fines up to $250,000.

>"It's an old crime, just new tools," said assistant U.S. Attorney John
>McKenzie, who prosecuted the case in U.S. District Court in Rockford, Ill.

[...]

>In August 1995, Hornbaker created an America Online profile of himself as a
>married woman named Rita, authorities say. He would log into "Married But
>Looking" or similar chat areas and start engaging male victims in typed
>conversation. After a while, he would ask them to go to a more confidential
>area called a private chat room "to get to know each other better.

>"There Rita would engage each man in erotic conversation, asking the victim
>to get her "hot" and offering a sexy photograph.

>Hornbaker, meanwhile, stored the conversation and printed out transcripts.
>Victims awaiting the nude photograph instead got a threatening letter. In it,
>Hornbaker -- now posing as Rita's enraged husband -- said he'd found a
>transcript of the conversation between the victim and Rita.

>Hornbaker set up boxes at private mail services to handle the bribes,
>usually between $500 and $2,000. None of the recipients paid him.