Speaker 1: A quick note, This is episode five of a six
Speaker 1: part series. If you haven't heard the prior episodes, we
Speaker 1: recommend going back and starting there. It should also be
Speaker 1: noted that this series explores sexualized imagery involving miners and violence.
Speaker 1: Please take care when listening. How did you feel when
Speaker 1: you heard the name Patrick Carrey?
Speaker 2: Overall like sharkeed, Like completely sharcked.
Speaker 1: I was sitting with Kayla back where the story began.
Speaker 1: We were in her living room, a couple miles from
Speaker 1: the basement where Patrick Carey had wreaked havoc on the
Speaker 1: young woman of Levett Town. Kayla remember, was the first
Speaker 1: person to learn from her father that she was on
Speaker 1: the website, and she later came to learn that Patrick
Speaker 1: Carey was the person behind the faked photos of her.
Speaker 2: This kid would DM me all the time and also
Speaker 2: like swipe up on my Instagram stories. He never gave
Speaker 2: strange vibes to me, So when I heard his name,
Speaker 2: I'm like, are we thinking the same Patrick Carrey? Because
Speaker 2: that's insane?
Speaker 1: And how did learning who was behind the website change
Speaker 1: your perspective on the situation.
Speaker 3: I think that made it even worse for Kayla.
Speaker 1: His actions had real world consequences.
Speaker 2: It completely altered the way that I thought about my body.
Speaker 2: I used to feel so confident about it. I felt
Speaker 2: so in tune with my body, and then it completely changed.
Speaker 2: I started having eating issues. I would eat two baits
Speaker 2: and feel absolutely disgusted in what I'm eating and disgusted
Speaker 2: in my body for wanting food.
Speaker 1: What Patrick had done to Kayla's pictures online worked on
Speaker 1: Kayla offline. He had manipulated her images, played with and
Speaker 1: altered her body to suit himself, and in turn, she
Speaker 1: was changed. She had to figure out who she was
Speaker 1: now in the aftermath of his campaign. She sought help,
Speaker 1: did the work, and eventually learned how to cope.
Speaker 2: It took a long time for me to get there.
Speaker 2: It took a lot out of me, and I'm never
Speaker 2: going to get the old person back, like I'm a
Speaker 2: whole new person now.
Speaker 1: In a comic book, this would be her origin story.
Speaker 4: This is New at five right here a disturbing arrest
Speaker 4: on Long Island. Some of the details are just too
Speaker 4: graphic for TV, but what we can tell you is
Speaker 4: that a young man is charge of posting explicit images
Speaker 4: of underage women online, allegedly taking their faces in personal
Speaker 4: info and then posting them to pornographic websites.
Speaker 1: In December twenty twenty two, Patrick Carey pleaded guilty. During
Speaker 1: his court appearances, he had to face not only the judge,
Speaker 1: but also the survivors and their families, which was closely
Speaker 1: covered by local New York news.
Speaker 4: The mother of one victim sat in court today as Carrie,
Speaker 4: twenty years old, faced dozens of charges including child pornography, harassment,
Speaker 4: and stalking.
Speaker 5: Because this is just terrible. It's horrible, and it's affected
Speaker 5: these girls, like you can't even imagine. These are good girls,
Speaker 5: they're in college. It's just horrible what this animal has done.
Speaker 2: I was wearing this long gray dress because I didn't
Speaker 2: want him to see my body.
Speaker 1: When Kayla showed up at the Nassau County Courthouse, she
Speaker 1: stood out here a vibrant shade of orange.
Speaker 2: I didn't want any part of my skin showing because
Speaker 2: I was scared that he would look at me and
Speaker 2: instantly start thinking something or even saying something to me.
Speaker 1: She walked into the building by herself and made her
Speaker 1: way through the halls.
Speaker 2: It was really like gloomy in there, and it was
Speaker 2: a tiny little room. He was already in there, sitting down,
Speaker 2: and there was only one seat left and it was
Speaker 2: right next to him.
Speaker 1: Kayla froze. He was just.
Speaker 2: There with no handcuffs, no lawyer next to him, all
Speaker 2: by himself. He didn't have any family with him. I
Speaker 2: had no family with me because they were all working and.
Speaker 3: Busy, so nobody could come with me. And I was
Speaker 3: really scared.
Speaker 2: And then I saw him, and it was like a
Speaker 2: fire or flight in my body, and quite honestly, it
Speaker 2: was probably the scariest moment. I instantly went into a
Speaker 2: panic attack. I ended up staying outside in the hallway
Speaker 2: because I just could not bring myself to walk past
Speaker 2: him have him look at me. Even though he wouldn't
Speaker 2: look at me, He kept his head down the whole
Speaker 2: entire time.
Speaker 1: It had been more than two years since she had
Speaker 1: first seen the website, and now, after all this time,
Speaker 1: Kayla found herself in the same room as the person
Speaker 1: who had gone after her. Even as she felt the
Speaker 1: panic rise up, she also felt herself growing more and
Speaker 1: more furious.
Speaker 2: He's maybe didn't physically hurt someone, but he mentally and
Speaker 2: emotionally abused us, And the fact that they're just letting
Speaker 2: him be out there with no one attending him, with
Speaker 2: no handcuffs. It was very angering that I just I
Speaker 2: had nowhere else to go, and it was very hurtful.
Speaker 2: I felt like it was like a smack in the face, like, oh,
Speaker 2: here we go again.
Speaker 3: I have to deal with him.
Speaker 2: And for that to be the first court appearance that
Speaker 2: I went to, and that's already how I was starting off,
Speaker 2: it really set the tone that like, okay, like I
Speaker 2: really got to be prepared for these next court appearances,
Speaker 2: because this is what could happen next time I found
Speaker 2: by myself.
Speaker 1: One day in court, a father of one of the
Speaker 1: victims was physically restrained from trying to attack Patrick. At
Speaker 1: another prosecutors read several of Patrick's more graphic posts out loud,
Speaker 1: and his father, a former NYPD detective, left the courtroom
Speaker 1: visibly distressed. Kayla showed up almost every day. Then she
Speaker 1: did what at first had felt unthinkable. She chose to
Speaker 1: face him. She remembers when she decided what she was
Speaker 1: going to say, it.
Speaker 2: Was actually in the shower. It was like struggling to
Speaker 2: figure out what I already said I was going to
Speaker 2: do it. A victim impacts the ement, but I didn't
Speaker 2: really know exactly what I wanted to say, and it
Speaker 2: was really angering me.
Speaker 3: And I was so low.
Speaker 2: I was like sitting down in my shower, just letting
Speaker 2: the hot water hit me. And then it just hit me,
Speaker 2: and I took out my phone and I just started
Speaker 2: writing at my notes and I did not stop. Like
Speaker 2: I wrote the whole entire thing, partably in five minutes.
Speaker 2: I said it to myself three times and I was like,
Speaker 2: this is the speech.
Speaker 3: It seemed.
Speaker 1: And hearings, victims are invited to share an impact statement
Speaker 1: to help the judge determine the correct punishment. Kayla was
Speaker 1: the only victim to read a statement at Patrick's sentencing.
Speaker 1: She felt nervous, but she got up from her seat
Speaker 1: in the courtroom and walked to the podium in front
Speaker 1: of the judge, about twenty feet from Patrick. Her hands
Speaker 1: shook so much she could barely read her own handwriting.
Speaker 2: I think the shaking wasn't the nerves, it was the
Speaker 2: anger in me. And I just needed to breathe, and
Speaker 2: I did that. I had to pretend nobody was in
Speaker 2: the room and I was just speaking from my heart.
Speaker 2: I stared directly at him, and he would not look
Speaker 2: at me. He kept looking straight ahead, and just like down,
Speaker 2: he refused to look at me. He was looking at
Speaker 2: his hands. But the whole time I spoke, I looked
Speaker 2: at him, the whole entire time. But it was the
Speaker 2: hard thing ever, because I didn't want him to know
Speaker 2: my emotions. I don't like people knowing my emotions already
Speaker 2: as it is, but having him know my emotions felt
Speaker 2: like a very vulnerable.
Speaker 1: You can say no to the next question, but we
Speaker 1: have your victim impact statement. Would you feel comfortable reading
Speaker 1: it out?
Speaker 2: Thinks I hear it here, I can safely say you
Speaker 2: are the weakest person in the room, not any of
Speaker 2: the victims. You had to sit behind an electronic device
Speaker 2: to say how you felt. I am the strongest person
Speaker 2: in the room because I am looking you directly in
Speaker 2: the face to tell you that you discuss me. You
Speaker 2: hurt me, but you've also changed me. You completely changed
Speaker 2: the way that I viewed myself and my body, and
Speaker 2: for that, I'll never forgive you your name, will forever
Speaker 2: give me night and haunt me. You have non idea
Speaker 2: what you have done to me mentally and physically, But
Speaker 2: at least I am strong enough to be able to
Speaker 2: tell you this.
Speaker 3: To your face.
Speaker 2: You make me sick like you make others, and I
Speaker 2: promise you that will never change. I hope you remember that.
Speaker 2: Now I have to heal my inner child because you
Speaker 2: couldn't hold back on your sexual desires and thoughts.
Speaker 1: How do you feel reading that again?
Speaker 2: Empowered?
Speaker 1: Empowered in what way.
Speaker 2: That I was able to actually stand up in front
Speaker 2: of him and speak my mind. Every single thing that
Speaker 2: I wrote in that statement was completely correct. Like he
Speaker 2: is disgusting to me. Still, I'll never forgive him.
Speaker 1: There were dozens of young women who were targeted by
Speaker 1: him on that website, but only a few of them
Speaker 1: decided to be involved in the criminal case. Why did
Speaker 1: you want to be involved in it?
Speaker 2: Because someone needs to speak out. I already went through
Speaker 2: trying to be quiet about it and trying to push
Speaker 2: it past, But now finding out that this happened to
Speaker 2: so many other.
Speaker 6: Women and.
Speaker 2: The extent that it happened in, Yeah, no, I couldn't
Speaker 2: be quiet on that. Also, it's not fair to us
Speaker 2: girls that we had to sit here in silence seeing
Speaker 2: a website be posted of us and not be able
Speaker 2: to do anything, and just have to sit here and
Speaker 2: take it. No, that's not fair at all.
Speaker 1: From iHeart Podcasts, Bloomberg and Kaleidoscope, this is Leavettown.
Speaker 3: I'm Olivia Cavell and I'm Maggie Murphy. Then it was
Speaker 3: Patrick Carey's turn to speak. Patrick wouldn't talk to us
Speaker 3: for this podcast, so we're having a voice actor read
Speaker 3: some of his statement here.
Speaker 6: Before the court. I can say endlessly, how I regret
Speaker 6: what I have done for the rest of my life.
Speaker 6: How I wish I could take it all back, not
Speaker 6: just because of the legal and social repercussions, but the
Speaker 6: regret that I failed my basic responsibility as a decent
Speaker 6: member of society. Thirty forty fifty years from now, I
Speaker 6: will still be reflecting and atoning simply to feel good
Speaker 6: about myself. Still, from this point on, it is up
Speaker 6: to me to show to the court and the people
Speaker 6: that care about me that I can do better. I
Speaker 6: can't chalk up my awful behavior to being a young,
Speaker 6: dumb kid. I have to address my own social and
Speaker 6: mental issues that got me here in the first place.
Speaker 6: Only consistently within a lifestyle of discipline, empathy, and routine
Speaker 6: for a long time, can I prove I'm worthy of
Speaker 6: some capacity of trust. And finally to my many victims
Speaker 6: and their families, if you want to hear anything from
Speaker 6: me at all, I would want my last words to
Speaker 6: be that I do not expect forgiveness. I'm just sorry.
Speaker 2: He apologized, and like that's worth nothing to me. You
Speaker 2: did what you did, and that's that. Like you already
Speaker 2: did that. Just because you say I'm sorry, it's not
Speaker 2: going to change anything.
Speaker 3: Since Patrick had pleaded guilty to multiple charges, including three felonies,
Speaker 3: there wasn't a question about whether he was going to
Speaker 3: be punished, only how the punishment would be doled out.
Speaker 3: The Nassau County District attorneys, Melissa Scannell and Kelsey Laura,
Speaker 3: had worked to have him charged with sex crimes in
Speaker 3: part to be sure that he was monitored for as
Speaker 3: long as possible. As Kelsey told us.
Speaker 2: We felt very strongly about having him on that sex
Speaker 2: offender probation because it's much more stringent than typical probation.
Speaker 1: In the end, he was sentenced to six months in
Speaker 1: prison plus ten years probation and a lifetime status as
Speaker 1: a registered sex offender, so no smartphones, no device with
Speaker 1: a camera without prior approval, and no living within one
Speaker 1: thousand feet of a school or a playground, which meant
Speaker 1: that when he got out of prison, he'd have to
Speaker 1: move out of his mum's house because it was right
Speaker 1: behind in elementary school. Before handing down the sentence, the
Speaker 1: judge told Patrick, quote, I can only hope that during
Speaker 1: your period of incarceration you will reflect and think and
Speaker 1: understand about the mental violence and intimate and emotional theft
Speaker 1: you did to these young women, and that they will
Speaker 1: continue to endure this for many years to come as
Speaker 1: a result of your cold and truly despicable behavior. With
Speaker 1: Patrick behind bars, Melissa and Kelsey from the District Attorney's
Speaker 1: office had one final mission to get the survivors pictures
Speaker 1: off the website. Remember, the vast majority of the pictures
Speaker 1: and reposts weren't illegal because the law at the time
Speaker 1: didn't say anything about posting deep faked nude images even
Speaker 1: if the people in them were minors. They were deep fakes.
Speaker 1: But now their creator was a convicted sex offender. The
Speaker 1: prosecutors thought they might have a shot of convincing the
Speaker 1: site administrator to take down the images, but when they
Speaker 1: went to the website, they discovered it was gone. Can
Speaker 1: you talk about your realization that come on printed pecks
Speaker 1: had gone dark.
Speaker 3: So when we realized that the website had gone down,
Speaker 3: we were really happy. We thought that that was wonderful.
Speaker 2: This is.
Speaker 3: Like, oh good, somebody else got them. That somebody else
Speaker 3: was Will Wallace the PI Back in New Zealand.
Speaker 7: There was kind of a loose collection of information on
Speaker 7: the Internet about the website. That period of my life.
Speaker 7: I was trying to make a concerted effort to get
Speaker 7: the website removed from the Internet.
Speaker 3: While Melissa and Kelsey had been working up charges against
Speaker 3: Patrick Carey, Will had turned his focus from catching people
Speaker 3: who were posting on the website to trying to get
Speaker 3: the whole thing shut down. By this point, Will had
Speaker 3: helped solve a few cases and was frankly sick of it,
Speaker 3: of the site, the images, the harassment, all of it.
Speaker 3: He was tired of playing whack a mole with creeps
Speaker 3: and ready to take down the site and the person
Speaker 3: responsible for its existence. Will's next step was to try
Speaker 3: and figure out who had registered the domain.
Speaker 7: Within a r there is something called who's histories. Whoa's
Speaker 7: entries are not very common nowadays. Anyone who registers our
Speaker 7: website pretty much gets their information redicted. But one of
Speaker 7: the very first entries for come on printed pecks head
Speaker 7: and old burner email.
Speaker 3: Burner emails are commonly used by people who want to
Speaker 3: hide their identity, So how do you connect a burner
Speaker 3: email to an actual person? A massive security breach may
Speaker 3: have exposed the social security numbers of millions of Americans
Speaker 3: follow the hackers.
Speaker 2: Hackers have breached the email accounts of two dozen organizations.
Speaker 3: Profiles and nearly seven million customers were hacked. Data breaches
Speaker 3: a treasure trove of information headline News at the time.
Speaker 3: When hackers steal our data from a company, they treat
Speaker 3: it like loot, to be sold off for profit, usually
Speaker 3: on the dark web. But after a few years the
Speaker 3: information is no longer worth much and makes its way
Speaker 3: to the broader web. So Will was able to find
Speaker 3: an old database of hacked email addresses. He put in
Speaker 3: the burner email and found a match. This is how
Speaker 3: Will found out that the same burner email that was
Speaker 3: used to create common printed picks had also been used
Speaker 3: to create an account for cafe press, where you order
Speaker 3: matching t shirts for family reunions or bachelorette parties. On
Speaker 3: that same database, Will could also see the password to
Speaker 3: the Burner account used on cafe press. It was fairly unusual,
Speaker 3: not the standard password one two three, and with that
Speaker 3: he could essentially run a reverse password search in another
Speaker 3: hacked email database.
Speaker 7: The password was of sufficient uniqueness that I could, you know,
Speaker 7: boil it down to a number of other email addresses.
Speaker 3: What Will found was a collection of email accounts that
Speaker 3: all had that same unlikely password, a decent indication that
Speaker 3: they were set up by the same person, and one
Speaker 3: of those emails had the name of an actual person,
Speaker 3: Scott Trent Coster. Will lipped up the name Scott Trink
Speaker 3: Coster appeared to be a real, living person according to
Speaker 3: public records, but as far as the Internet was concerned,
Speaker 3: Scott Trink Coster didn't really exist. No social media, no LinkedIn, nothing.
Speaker 7: It wasn't quite enough to be like, yeah, this guy
Speaker 7: definitely runs the website. So I was like, yeah, I've
Speaker 7: got a hunch that this person is perhaps running the website,
Speaker 7: but it's not enough. He's a ghost. He's a real ghost,
Speaker 7: and he's been very good at remaining as a ghost.
Speaker 7: You know, credit to him, I give him credit for that, right.
Speaker 7: He tuns through emails uses burners all the time. Some
Speaker 7: people are very good at managing to slip through everyone's hands.
Speaker 3: Will needed more than a name, He needed evidence.
Speaker 7: When it comes to investigating anything, really, they always talk
Speaker 7: about following the money, and I'm by no means a
Speaker 7: financial crime investigator. But the good thing about money is
Speaker 7: usually you have to tether an actual identity to kind
Speaker 7: of any transaction that takes place, if it involves a
Speaker 7: credit card or bank transfer or whatever. Not so much
Speaker 7: with crypto, but you know, real money, there's always an
Speaker 7: identity behind the transactions.
Speaker 3: So Will went back to the website and looked around.
Speaker 7: There is a portal that allows you to pay to
Speaker 7: delete accounts and images on the platform.
Speaker 3: That's right. One thing we haven't mentioned about the tributing
Speaker 3: website was that victims could try to get their images
Speaker 3: done for a price. The young women in Levittown, as
Speaker 3: far as we know, weren't aware of this feature, but
Speaker 3: for ninety nine dollars, the website said it would take
Speaker 3: down images by request. Will decided to try that way.
Speaker 3: In to pay the ninety nine dollars and see where
Speaker 3: it took him. He put in his credit card information and.
Speaker 7: The credit card statement came back with a company name.
Speaker 3: Cloud Cyber Services LC. Will found a record for the
Speaker 3: company on a British business registry. He saw it was
Speaker 3: registered to Scott Trink Costa.
Speaker 7: And I googled it and saw that Scott drink Coaster
Speaker 7: was a director of the company. Essentially, it was brilliant.
Speaker 7: I was like, I know exactly who runs this website,
Speaker 7: even if I don't know a lot about them, but
Speaker 7: it was like a milestone for sure.
Speaker 3: Finally Will had found evidence connecting the website where women
Speaker 3: and girls all over the world were being abused, degraded,
Speaker 3: and docked to Scott. He had also found another company
Speaker 3: used by the tributing website in a Louisiana business registry.
Speaker 3: He saw it was registered to a person name Scott
Speaker 3: Trink cost location, Louisiana, age thirty. With this evidence, Will
Speaker 3: began tipping information on Scott to reporters who had previously
Speaker 3: written about the website and law enforcement who might be interested.
Speaker 3: He also wrote a blog post outlining his findings in detail,
Speaker 3: and then crickets.
Speaker 7: I didn't really get any response, which I found really
Speaker 7: surprising because in context, the website had certainly been talked
Speaker 7: about a lot generally in tabloid newspapers or court documents.
Speaker 7: I thought there would be a lot more of an
Speaker 7: appetite to prosure it from anyone. Apparently that wasn't the case.
Speaker 3: But Will wasn't ready to give up, not yet. He
Speaker 3: wanted to seek justice for the young women and girls
Speaker 3: he saw on the site and to hold Scott accountable,
Speaker 3: but he needed allies.
Speaker 7: At that point, I was like, well, where ours is
Speaker 7: this website being talked about? And that is how I
Speaker 7: came to know that read it forum being female hate subs.
Speaker 3: That's after the break. After months, even years of digging
Speaker 3: through the dregs of the Internet, Will Wallace had finally
Speaker 3: found the person behind the website there had been the
Speaker 3: source of so much harm. He thought having the name
Speaker 3: behind the site, Scott Drink Costa, would be enough to
Speaker 3: hold him accountable, but the authorities didn't seem interested. So
Speaker 3: Will when in search of another group of people he
Speaker 3: thought might be, and he found them on Reddit, specifically
Speaker 3: a subreddit with more than twenty thousand members called ban
Speaker 3: Female Hate, a forum created to report misogynistic Reddit groups
Speaker 3: that posted non consensual images. It then expanded to become
Speaker 3: a watchdog for the Internet writ large. The forum has
Speaker 3: tips on how to report abuse and guides to getting
Speaker 3: your photos removed. Will saw that one user named Claudia
Speaker 3: Lopez had a lot of clout in the forum and
Speaker 3: that she was also digging into the same tributing website
Speaker 3: he was after. So Will shot her a message.
Speaker 7: I said, look, I know who runs it. I've written
Speaker 7: this blog post that outlines how I came to find
Speaker 7: the information.
Speaker 3: I thought he was a troll because his new account
Speaker 3: was very new to Reddit. Claudia is super mysterious. We
Speaker 3: don't know what her real name is. She appears to
Speaker 3: live outside the US and types as if she's speaking
Speaker 3: through Google Translate. This is me reading our back and forth.
Speaker 3: We've put an effect on my voice when I'm reading
Speaker 3: back what Claudia wrote. Why do you have to keep
Speaker 3: yourself anonymous? I have many enemies. Some show themselves and
Speaker 3: others like to be invisible. An attack without warning. Claudia
Speaker 3: had been active on the subreddit for a few years.
Speaker 3: She says she has helped many women and girls who
Speaker 3: have been targets on other tributing websites. This work started
Speaker 3: a few years ago, when she says she began tracking
Speaker 3: down a pedophile online? Why were you following a pedophile online?
Speaker 3: It was the helplessness of seeing teenagers like me suffering
Speaker 3: at the hands of these monsters, and no one seemed
Speaker 3: to do anything. A minor had to start fighting this
Speaker 3: because the people who should be doing it were not.
Speaker 3: Did you know the pedophile or their victim?
Speaker 2: Nope?
Speaker 3: He owned another child sexual abuse material website and I
Speaker 3: started looking into it. Claudia says she sent email after
Speaker 3: email to that website's host, the service that keeps websites
Speaker 3: afloat on the Internet, telling them that the site had
Speaker 3: child sexual abuse material on it, until she says, they
Speaker 3: shut down. After having a website closed, I began to
Speaker 3: see comonprinted picks as the next target. I started investigating
Speaker 3: the website. I had heard a lot about blackmailing victims
Speaker 3: of revenge porn. Scott was dedicated to making money from
Speaker 3: the victim's suffering and their hope that the content would
Speaker 3: disappear from the forum. After Will messaged her, Claudia immediately
Speaker 3: posted a link to his blog on the Reddit sub
Speaker 3: with a long screed, a call to arms for its
Speaker 3: tens of thousands of members, telling them justice will be
Speaker 3: done for all the victims of these psychopaths. A Reddit
Speaker 3: army is something to It's impressive and a little alarming
Speaker 3: how fast dozens of people can come together with a
Speaker 3: singular purpose, in this case, to find Scott Trancosta and
Speaker 3: ruin him. They started a vigilante campaign against his tributing website,
Speaker 3: lodging a bunch of complaints to its host and domain providers,
Speaker 3: hoping they would take it down. Meanwhile, Will messaged a
Speaker 3: hacker who he thought could be helpful, a hacker who
Speaker 3: goes by the name pompoon Purin. At the time, pompom
Speaker 3: Purine was running a major dark web marketplace called breach Forums.
Speaker 3: Breach Forums was the largest English language market for hackers
Speaker 3: to sell stolen data, enabling the extortion of countless companies
Speaker 3: in the US and around the world, and giving cyber
Speaker 3: criminals a place to profit off their theft. When I
Speaker 3: spoke Toon, he told me Will's case excited him. Palm
Speaker 3: and some of his friends started digging and found Scott's
Speaker 3: old college email address, hacked into it and found a
Speaker 3: photo of Scott's driver's license. With that, they contacted a
Speaker 3: sheriff's department in Louisiana, where Scott had once been arrested
Speaker 3: for cannabis possession. They requested a copy of his mugshot
Speaker 3: and the police report. Palm then created a website called
Speaker 3: Scott Trent coostera dot com, which splashed the mugshot across
Speaker 3: the landing page. Several hackers and trolls then spammed the
Speaker 3: tributing website with the link to Scott Trentkcoster dot com
Speaker 3: and began harassing Scott's family with incessant phone calls. One day,
Speaker 3: the hackers say the burner number they created specifically to
Speaker 3: target Scott and his family rang. The voice on the
Speaker 3: end of the line was shrill PI on Yellow Pages.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I am a PI.
Speaker 3: What can I thank you for you? And while we
Speaker 3: don't know for sure if it was Scott, he appeared
Speaker 3: to be trolling them back, playing them at their own game.
Speaker 2: I just want to be shored.
Speaker 4: Can I do your certificate number?
Speaker 3: The tools of the efficient harassment machine that Scott had
Speaker 3: created with the website were now being turned against him.
Speaker 3: It was almost like Scott was this Scooby Doo villain
Speaker 3: with his mask pulled off. He tried to bat off
Speaker 3: redditors and hackers who told me that Scott ended up
Speaker 3: putting a filter in his name on the site, so
Speaker 3: if they posted a comment mentioning it, it would vanish.
Speaker 3: Will and others also went after Scott's income source by
Speaker 3: reporting the site to an online advertising company, which pulled
Speaker 3: the website's ads. Will then pressure another one of the
Speaker 3: website's providers, Di doos Guard to take it down, and then,
Speaker 3: after weeks of Will in the Reddit Army's efforts, it
Speaker 3: was gone.
Speaker 7: The website experienced an outage, it was no longer retrievable
Speaker 7: on the internet.
Speaker 3: De Oscard confirmed to us that it cut its relationship
Speaker 3: with the website around that time. It didn't say why
Speaker 3: the site went dark.
Speaker 7: I think at that point I was like, oh, yeah, finally,
Speaker 7: you know, someone's sort of taken a closer look, or
Speaker 7: the hosting providers decided to kick them off, or whatever.
Speaker 7: Someone's done their job somewhere along the lines. But as
Speaker 7: far as like popping our champagne model or anything like that,
Speaker 7: there was nothing like that. But I was quietly, I
Speaker 7: was quietly pleased that I managed to get that dump
Speaker 7: taken off the internet.
Speaker 3: Will doesn't think that this should become a common practice,
Speaker 3: and that all websites should be shut down after a
Speaker 3: public campaign. But there are exceptions to every rule, and
Speaker 3: to him, this was one.
Speaker 7: I think there needs to be an honest conversation about
Speaker 7: what the platform is being used rede and whether that
Speaker 7: includes being a safe haven for people who choose to
Speaker 7: share child sexual assault material. I think law enforcement need
Speaker 7: to decide at what point as the saturation of content
Speaker 7: so much so that we need to involve ourselves, Like
Speaker 7: this isn't just a pornography website, it is for severe
Speaker 7: internet harassment.
Speaker 3: In this case, law enforcement didn't appear to get involved,
Speaker 3: and so the online vigilantes banded together and took the reins.
Speaker 3: But when this happens online, even among the so called
Speaker 3: good guys, you never really know who's behind the keyboard. Pompompurin,
Speaker 3: who'd helped coordinate the attack on Scott Trank Costa has
Speaker 3: since been arrested himself. In the real world, he was
Speaker 3: a twenty year old from Peaschool, New York named con
Speaker 3: Brian Fitzpatrick. While Connor was trolling Scott, the FBI was
Speaker 3: tracking Connor for running breech forums. They ended up arresting
Speaker 3: Connor and charging him with selling stolen data. He pleaded guilty.
Speaker 3: It turned out when they confiscated his devices, the FBI
Speaker 3: found child sexual abuse material on his computer. Yeah, the
Speaker 3: guy going after the other guy for sexual abuse materials
Speaker 3: seems to have been consuming similar stuff. Palm is now
Speaker 3: twenty two years old, and after a bit of back
Speaker 3: and forth, in the end he declined to be interviewed
Speaker 3: about his case. What we know is that he was
Speaker 3: sentenced to twenty years of supervised release, with the first
Speaker 3: two years under house arrest, but the government argued that
Speaker 3: the sentence was too lenient, and an appeals court agreed,
Speaker 3: ordering that he be re sentenced. Also, as part of
Speaker 3: his punishment, he can't use any device connected to the Internet.
Speaker 3: The only way I could communicate with him was through
Speaker 3: letters sent to his friend, who then snuck them over
Speaker 3: to him. From what I gather, his mum and dad
Speaker 3: are really strict. If the redditors and hackers' motive was
Speaker 3: to expose Scott, their efforts had the opposite effect. Since
Speaker 3: the campaign began, Scott has gone further underground. I'm told
Speaker 3: by one of the hackers who's seen Scott's financial statements
Speaker 3: that he's been airbnb hopping, not staying in one place
Speaker 3: for long, Olivia and I still haven't been able to
Speaker 3: talk to him, except for one short email exchange. Early
Speaker 3: in our reporting, I emailed Scott to say we intended
Speaker 3: to name him in a print article we were doing
Speaker 3: about the site. Scott responded. He said, quote, if somebody
Speaker 3: does not wish to be named or does not wish
Speaker 3: to talk, why are you going to mention them in
Speaker 3: a story they did not agree to or even publish
Speaker 3: it in the first place. Claim that people could now
Speaker 3: have their images removed from his site for free. He
Speaker 3: asked us not to quote name and shame him. Quote
Speaker 3: we ask that you do not write your story and
Speaker 3: instead focus on something more important rather than bringing attention
Speaker 3: to such a sensitive matter and naming individuals publicly. And
Speaker 3: then he signed off, calling me quote weirdo.
Speaker 7: He makes himself out to be the victim. He's just
Speaker 7: reverses the victim in a fender and makes himself out
Speaker 7: to be the victim and all.
Speaker 3: Of this right, and he's literally made the entire website
Speaker 3: is about not only naming and shaming, but showing people
Speaker 3: in their most intimate setting without their knowledge. Is that
Speaker 3: irony is unbelievable.
Speaker 7: It is It's such a weird projection thing going on there.
Speaker 3: If Will's a terrier, then Scott's the bone he can't
Speaker 3: dig up. Within just a couple of weeks of the
Speaker 3: site going down, another popped up, same look, same picture's
Speaker 3: new name, come on, Printed Picks was now tribute printedpicks
Speaker 3: dot com. Claudia the reddit sloof, so she immediately sent
Speaker 3: a complaint to the new site server network cloud Flare.
Speaker 3: The next day, she says, she got an email from
Speaker 3: a strange address. She didn't recognize. My email address was
Speaker 3: supposed to be anonymous, so I was totally surprised, and
Speaker 3: when I found out it was him, I was doubly surprised.
Speaker 3: To her, it appeared to be from Scott. He seemed
Speaker 3: to be angry that I submitted an abuse report. I
Speaker 3: suspected that he was afraid that his domain would be
Speaker 3: suspended again. Claudia showed us the screenshots of the emails. Basically,
Speaker 3: the person writing to her wanted Claudia to back off.
Speaker 3: The person taunted her, telling her to stop reporting child
Speaker 3: sexual abuse material to the site's providers, telling her quote,
Speaker 3: a fully closed email is not child abuse. I didn't
Speaker 3: give it much important. I don't care that someone I
Speaker 3: don't know tries to attack me with ridicule totally repulsive.
Speaker 3: The two went back and forth, but then she says,
Speaker 3: the person stopped responding. The new website has gone up
Speaker 3: and down numerous times since the summer of twenty twenty
Speaker 3: three under a few different URLs. Sometimes the site will
Speaker 3: be frozen with a note splashed over it asking for
Speaker 3: donations and Scott may be in legal trouble now. In
Speaker 3: August twenty twenty four, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement
Speaker 3: seesed the website and is actively investigating, it, told me,
Speaker 3: but what exactly they're probing isn't clear. I periodically check
Speaker 3: in with Scott's family. When I rang his mum in
Speaker 3: October twenty twenty four, she told me that two Secret
Speaker 3: Service agents had showed up looking for her son. They
Speaker 3: claimed it was in response to threats he'd made online
Speaker 3: against Presidents Joe Biden and Donald Trump. I'd seen a
Speaker 3: similar threat posted on the tributing website. In a bizarre outburst,
Speaker 3: Scott's mom said she told the Secret Service she hadn't
Speaker 3: seen her son in months. The takedown notice on the
Speaker 3: website says that it was seized in relation to a
Speaker 3: law protecting the life of someone who might be in
Speaker 3: imminent danger, and Florida, where the investigation is taking place,
Speaker 3: is home to Trump, a previous target of assassinations. Scott's
Speaker 3: mum and I talked about what he was like as
Speaker 3: a kid, that even in his younger years, he was
Speaker 3: very good with computers. He must have been. He helped
Speaker 3: develop the website when he was a teenager, around the
Speaker 3: same age as Patrick Carey, when he too was coming
Speaker 3: of age along the darkest edges of the web.
Speaker 6: So we are now at the location of someone you've
Speaker 6: been tracking for a long time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this guy has been a mystery and enigma for us,
Speaker 1: Like we've had so many conversations about Scotch trink Costa,
Speaker 1: who he is, why he does what he does. Maggie
Speaker 1: and I still wanted to talk to Scott, so we
Speaker 1: found his most recent address, a flashy high rise in
Speaker 1: downtown Los Angeles.
Speaker 6: Did you see ray in front of us? That's the
Speaker 6: building glow.
Speaker 1: This looks like sour on from all of the rings,
Speaker 1: like a giant black monolith. Only to find out Scott
Speaker 1: didn't live there anymore. Apparently he's still on the move.
Speaker 1: But while we were in La looking for him.
Speaker 3: We found something else, So we're heading to an apartment
Speaker 3: block in downtown LA to go and see the apartment
Speaker 3: that's registered is the address for soul e com Inc.
Speaker 3: Which is the owner of Drawn Nudes dot Io.
Speaker 1: We were hearing of more cases like the Livettown one
Speaker 1: tied to a handful of deep fake apps. We wanted
Speaker 1: to know who was behind them.
Speaker 3: Hi, my name is Margie. Are you crying?
Speaker 1: That's next time on the final episode of Livettown.
Speaker 3: This series is reported and hosted by a Carvill and
Speaker 3: Me Margie Murphy. Produced by Kaleidoscope, led by Julia Nutter,
Speaker 3: edited by Nedda to Luis som Narni, Producing by Darren
Speaker 3: luck Potts. Executive produced by Kate Osborne. Original composition and
Speaker 3: mixing by Steve Bone Patrick Kerry Stateman is read by
Speaker 3: actor Jackson Ark. Our Bloomberg editors are Caitlin Kenney and
Speaker 3: Jeff Grocop. Some additional reporting by Samantha Stewart. Sage Bauman
Speaker 3: is Bloomberg's executive producer and head of Podcasting. Kristin Powers
Speaker 3: is our senior executive editor from iHeart. Our executive producers
Speaker 3: are Tyler Klang and Nicki Etor. Levittown is a production
Speaker 3: of Bloomberg, Kaleidoscope and iHeart Podcasts. If you like this show,
Speaker 3: give us a follow and tell your friends