Monday, February 17th 2014, 12:02 pm
A Green Country man is behind bars after prosecutors say he was running a, revenge porn website. Casey Meyering is being held at the jail waiting to answer to extortion charges in California.
Meyering reportedly posted more than 400 sexually explicit photos and extorted $250 from victims to remove the photos from his website.
Legal Blogger Adam Steinbaugh said, "If they're going out to Oklahoma to pick them up and drag them back to Northern California they're serious."
Agents from California paid a visit to Green Country; a special cybercrimes task force was looking for Meyering in Tulsa. After kicking in the door, agents found Meyering in a midtown hotel room.
California Attorney General Kamala D. Harris said Meyering, 28, owned a website called "WinByState.com," that asked the public to post nude and explicit photos of people without their permission.
Meyering reportedly encouraged people to post the photos and identify their "win" according to city and state, sometimes using the victim's name. The site is described as a "user supported website where you can trade your ex-girlfriend, your current girlfriend, or any other girl that you might know," according to a news release from the California Department of Justice.
According to court documents, a victim found stolen nude photos of herself on Meyering's site. The victim wanted the photos taken down, but prosecutors said she had to pay more than $200 to Meyering to get them taken down.
"It's about pure profit, about lining his pockets off the embarrassment and the exposure of people who are victims and people who have no intention of having their privacy violated in this way," Harris said.
Prosecutors traced money paid by the victims to a Tulsa bank account in Meyering's name. Steinbaugh wrote about Meyering's site in June.
"So they're profiting off of the embarrassment that these people experienced at their hands," he said.
Steinbaugh said the arrest, regardless of where you live, shows California is serious about taking down these revenge porn websites.
"I think it's awful what these sites do to people. I think it's more awful when they hide what they're doing; they try to extort people. That's a terrible thing to do and that deserves criticism," Steinbaugh said.
Meyering was arrested at the Trade Winds Motel in the 3100 block of East Skelly Drive in Tulsa. Police told News On 6 he refused to open the door and officers had to force their way into the hotel room.
He was booked on three felony complaints of attempted extortion. He is being held without bond for Napa County, California.
California has a revenge porn law on the books to prosecute these crimes but Oklahoma does not.
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