Tuesday, April 10, 2018

Two dozen new charges filed against man charged with cyberstalking former housemate



A MAN who was arrested and charged in October 2017 for conducting an extensive cyberstalking campaign against his former housemate, was charged today (April 9) in federal court in Boston with an additional 24 offenses. 


Ryan S. Lin, 25, of Newton, Mass., was charged with seven counts of cyberstalking, five counts of distribution of child pornography, nine counts of making hoax bomb threats, three counts of computer fraud and abuse and one count of aggravated identity theft, according to then-acting U.S. Attorney William D. Weinreb. 


Lin is also accused of creating and posting fraudulent online profiles in the female victim’s name through which he solicited rape fantasies, including “gang bang” and other sexual activities, which in turn caused men to show up at her home. 

Lin is suspected of making dozens of threats to bomb or shoot up schools and daycare centers in nearby Waltham and Chelmsford.

COURT RENDERING
Suspected cyberstalker Ryan S. Lin
Those charges were added to the October 2017 complaint, said Acting Assistant Attorney General John P. Cronan of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division in a press briefing.

Specifically, from about May 2016 through Oct. 5, 2017, Lin engaged in an extensive cyberstalking campaign against a 24-year-old female victim.

Federal investigators said Lin began living with the victim and her roommates in the spring of 2016, after answering a Craigslist ad for a vacant room in their Watertown house.

Lin allegedly hacked into the housemate's online accounts and devices and stole the her private photographs, personally identifiable information, and private diary entries, which contained highly sensitive details about her medical, psychological and sexual history, and distributed the victim’s material to hundreds of people associated with her.
Lin also allegedly engaged in a number of other activities targeting the victim, including relentless anonymous text messaging and additional hoaxes, from shortly after he met her until October 2017.

The Information further charges that, in addition to his former housemate, Lin engaged in cyberstalking activity aimed at six additional individuals. Some were associated with the former housemate, and others were entirely unrelated. The additional victims include a female victim that was also Lin’s housemate in Newton at the time of his arrest. It is also alleged that on multiple occasions, Lin sent sexually explicit images of prepubescent children on an unsolicited basis to the victim’s mother, the victim’s co-worker and housemate, a friend of the victim who resided in New Jersey, and two of Lin’s former classmates in New York.

In addition to the cyberstalking activity, Lin is accused of falsely and repeatedly reporting to law enforcement that there were bombs at the victim’s Waltham, Massachusetts residence. 

Lin also allegedly created a false social media profile in the name of the victim’s housemate in Waltham and posted that he was going to “shoot up” a school in a nearby town. These threats expanded beyond Waltham and became part of an extensive and prolonged pattern of threats to local schools, private homes, businesses, and other institutions in the broader community.
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