Post by WaTcHeR on Apr 4, 2006 10:58:29 GMT -5
Officer Michael Valentine
04/04/2006 - SUFFOLK COUNTY---A Suffolk County police officer is charged with cyber stalking a woman he met on an online dating service, gaining access to the victim's Yahoo email account, opening her email, changing her profile on an online dating service and then posing as her in emails sent to male clients of the online dating service to falsely indicate her romantic interest.
Officer Michael Valentine, 28, of 12 Beverly Road, Lake Grove was arraigned Monday on a 197-count indictment before Suffolk County Court Judge James Hudson in Riverhead. Valentine, who has worked as a Suffolk County police officer since November of 2002, was released on his own recognizance. The defendant has been suspended from the department without pay.
Suffolk District Attorney Thomas Spota said Valentine began accessing the young woman's email account in December. The couple met one another on Match.com in November of last year and dated for approximately six weeks before she ended their relationship. It was at that point Valentine began hacking the victim's Yahoo email account to read her email, and in some cases respond to emails using her name. According to the indictment, the defendant also changed the woman's public profile on Match.com and posing as her, he "winked" (sent a Match.com email to indicate interest) at approximately 70 male clients of the dating service, falsely indicating the woman's romantic interest in them.
"On at least two occasions, men under the mistaken impression that the victim was interested in them showed up at her home to take the victim out on a date," DA Spota said.
The district attorney said detectives from the police department's computer crimes section have established that Valentine used a number of computers when he hacked into the victim's email, including a police computer in the Sixth Precinct office. Valentine faces charges of official misconduct, tampering with physical evidence, falsely reporting an incident and offering a false instrument for filing for reporting to police that the victim threatened him. Officer Valentine showed police an email he claimed to have received from the woman that threatened her friends would "come out of the bushes with a baseball bat and beat your brains in". Valentine said the woman also wrote that she planned to report to police that he beat her.
Police believe it was the defendant who wrote the emails, signed the victim's name and used her Yahoo account to mail them to himself.
Officer Valentine is scheduled to return to Suffolk County court on April 20. 4-3-06