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Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Man gets 4 years for stalking on Facebook


SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP)
USA Today/News

A California man who trolled women's Facebook pages searching for clues that allowed him to take over their email accounts was sentenced Friday to more than four years in state prison after a judge rejected a plea for a lighter sentence and likened the man to a peeping Tom.

Once he took over women's email accounts, George Bronk searched their folders for nude or semi-nude photographs or videos sent to their husbands or boyfriends and distributed the images to their contact list, prosecutors said.

The emails went to families, friends and co-workers. Women in 17 states, the District of Columbia and England were victimized.

"This case serves as a stark example of what occurs in so-called cyberspace. It has very real consequences," Sacramento County Superior Court Judge Lawrence Brown said. "The intrusion of one's profile is no different than intruding one's home."

Bronk, 24, pleaded guilty in January to charges that included computer intrusion, false impersonation and possession of child pornography.

Brown sentenced him to four years in state prison for the charges related to the Facebook and email offenses, and added eight more months for charges related to child pornography.

Bronk's attorney, Monica Lynch, said her client took responsibility for his actions and showed remorse. She had sought a sentence of one year in local jail with probation afterward, or two years in state prison with no probation.

Brown based his decision on a sentencing recommendation by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. The evaluation stated that Bronk demonstrated remorse and quoted the self-identified alcoholic as saying, "If I could go back with the knowledge that I have now, I would not have done any of the things I did."

But the state expressed concern about his lack of understanding about the severity of his crime and noted Bronk had demonstrated "a high degree of callousness." The evaluation said he used the child pornographic videos and images "as an instrument designed to inflict pain and humiliation on the very people he stole the images from."

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