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发帖数: 13236 | 3 Prolific burglar cyberstalked those who crossed him, prosecutors say
By Jeremy Gorner and Jason Meisner, Chicago Tribune reporters
7:05 a.m. CDT, April 26, 2012
Jicheng "Kevin" Liu was a prolific burglar with a mean streak who
cyberstalked anyone who crossed him, Cook County prosecutors say.
In retaliation for his arrest in the theft of a stroller, Liu ran online ads
claiming his accuser performed acts of prostitution out of her Roscoe
Village residence, authorities said. The woman and her husband were awakened
in the middle of the night several times earlier this year by men at their
front door who thought they had appointments for sex.
Prosecutors said Liu sometimes mistakenly targeted the wrong people, then
unleashed a torrent of malicious allegations online against them. In one
case, wrongly thinking another victim caused his arrest, he alleged that the
woman, a nurse at a children's hospital, routinely mistreated patients,
they said. Then, posing as a female homebuyer on the Internet, Liu accused
the nurse's Realtor husband of rape, according to prosecutors.
Another couple who sold high-end goods on eBay on consignment suspected Liu
of peddling stolen merchandise. When he discovered they had moved to stop an
online auction, he flooded consumer websites with complaints about their
honesty and texted them veiled threats about their young child, authorities
alleged. The couple said the alleged cyberattacks cost them their online
business.
In sweeping indictments of the 32-year-old Liu this month, prosecutors
alleged that his cyberstalking victims ranged from former bosses who had
fired him years earlier to two Chicago police officers who had arrested him.
Prosecutors suspect Liu in some 90 burglaries in Cook County in which more
than $500,000 in merchandise was stolen. They said Liu would spend days
casing a particular street, pretending to be talking on his cellphone as he
walked around looking for easy theft opportunities such as packages just
delivered on front porches. He also used stolen garage door openers — with
the owner's address marked on each — to burglarize from them time and again
, prosecutors allege.
Authorities said they found stolen merchandise piled high in Liu's Lincoln
Park residence and in at least one of the 10-by-10-foot storage units he
rented. "It was like being in an episode of 'Hoarders,' only all of the
stuff was stolen," one investigator said.
But it was the scope of the alleged cyberstalking that set Liu apart,
prosecutors said.
"It's a whole different ballgame than anything we've indicted before because
everything is in cyberspace," said Assistant State's Attorney John Mahoney,
a supervisor in the special prosecutions bureau. "We've had to send search
warrants for things that exist solely on the Internet."
Liu, a Chinese national who authorities say has been living illegally in the
U.S. for a decade, faces up to 15 years in prison if convicted on the most
serious of the multiple counts of cyberstalking, theft and damaging victims'
businesses.
According to a 55-page complaint for a search warrant, one alleged victim's
own investigative work proved crucial to linking Liu to vicious cyberattacks
. The Lincoln Park homeowner spotted Liu stealing a package from his front
porch in March 2011, but Liu managed to escape, authorities said.
After the person spotted Liu apparently casing the neighborhood in August,
police found him hiding under a porch, according to the complaint. But the
misdemeanor trespassing charge was later thrown out of court.
Authorities believe, however, that Liu learned the identity of his accuser
from a police report documenting his arrest.
Early this year, the accuser discovered from a "Google alert" — a feature
on the popular search engine that allows users to learn when they're named
in Web postings — that he was the intended target of a scathing review
assailing his ethics. The next day, Google alerts poured in about his wife,
ripping her event-planning business.
The homeowner concluded that the attacks were related after noticing similar
defamatory phrases had been used in the separate postings. From more online
research, he was able to learn that the attack on his wife had been
plagiarized almost verbatim from a review that blasted a woman from Virginia
. He ultimately figured out Liu was behind the attacks after hearing from
the Virginia woman that she had fired Liu seven years earlier, authorities
said.
Through more comprehensive searches, the accuser identified about a half-
dozen others who said they had been defamed by Liu on consumer websites,
according to the complaint. Among those were two Chicago police officers who
had arrested Liu. A posting on a website accused one of the officers of
molesting a half-dozen underage children.
The Tribune spoke with several of Liu's alleged victims, but Renee Molda was
the only one who agreed to be identified for this story. The others said
they still feared retribution from Liu even though he is in jail awaiting
trial and likely to be deported to China after his criminal charges are
resolved.
Molda said she and her fiance, Steve Seibert, had sold merchandise on
consignment on eBay for a number of years, but they decided to post an ad
for their services on Craigslist with sales slowing in summer 2010.
Liu responded, and during their first meeting, the couple were impressed by
his intelligence and clean-cut appearance but a little concerned to find the
storage unit on Fullerton Avenue filled with goods.
"He wanted us to do over $100,000 ... in sales. And he gave us a detailed
spreadsheet with the items that he had," Molda said in a telephone interview.
At a second meeting, Molda said, she thought it was a bit odd that he gave
her a key to the storage facility and the freedom to bring customers there
without Liu present.
By then, the two already had dozens of Liu's items on sale on eBay. Among
the merchandise they brought home from the last trip to the storage unit had
been a golf bag. Inside they said they found a receipt — with a name other
than Liu's.
They reached out to the owner only to find out that the person's garage and
those of several neighbors had been burglarized.
Fearful that they were in the midst of an auction of stolen merchandise, the
couple attached a disclaimer on eBay. Little did they know that Liu became
aware of the warning, too, because he had been bidding on his own
merchandise, Molda said.
The harassment soon began, she said. First came waves of spam in their email
account. Then erotic images. And even more maddening were the text messages
Liu allegedly sent to them.
"'Have you checked on your son? Is he sleeping?'" Molda recalled one of the
messages saying. "He was naming members of my family (and) telling me that
as long as he lived, he's going to make my life a living hell."
Liu also put their reputations with eBay in jeopardy, according to Molda.
She said Liu went on a consumer website and wrote dozens of phony reviews
about the couple's eBay business, claiming they had duped thousands of
people by selling fraudulent mortgages as well as marketing stolen and
counterfeit merchandise on their eBay operation.
The cyberattacks cost the couple their eBay business, Molda said. Unable to
afford their rent, they and their young son were forced to move in with
relatives.
"I ended up having anxiety," she said. "It's just a constant worry,
especially when you have a child."
Months later, the two partnered with another company in an attempt to revive
their online business, but the new business came under similar attack on
the Internet in October, authorities said
Molda has been able to find work selling furniture, a job that's not as
lucrative as her eBay business, she said. But she worries about her
prospects for finding more lucrative work.
"The Internet is a main source for people to look up things, (and employers
would see), 'Renee Molda. Oh my gosh, we won't even think about hiring her,'
" she said. "We're glad that he's caught, (but) what do we do? Where do we
go from here? How do we fix this?"
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