Abuse of social networks is not new and the latest to come to light is Twitter rants against Google senior executive Marissa Mayer. The offender, 27 year-old Gregory Calvin King, has been indicted on felony charges by a San Francisco grand jury. The indictment identified the alleged victim only as “M.M.” but King’s Twitter account shows him sending thousands of threatening posts to Mayer.
King is charged with making threats transmitted through interstate communication and harassing communications. He was arrested in Texas last month for sending threatening and insulting messages to Mayer via Twitter posts from November 2010 to August 2011.
The San Francisco Examiner said the indictment mentions postings to Mayer on August 14 saying:
“IM SURE YOU THINK IM SERIOUS AND I’LL F****** SHOOT YOU” and “I REALLY THINK I NEED TO SHOOT SOMEONE TO EVEN MY F****** SCORE.”
Other posts on King’s Twitter feed included “I should f****** shoot your ass marissa.”
…In some of his Twitter posts, King accused Mayer of having him falsely arrested and being associated with a group that tried to infect him with HIV “in powder form.” He also made derogatory statements about Jews, blacks and Latinos.
According to the FBI there is no apparent connection between Mayer and King who was arrested in Texas, where he had moved from Virginia. He desired to be taken to San Francisco, where the complaint was filed for his bail hearing. King made an initial court appearance in San Antonio on August 22, three days after the account he is accused of running last tweeted. Alleging that King posed a danger to the safety of the community, a prosecutor requested that he be held without a bail. He was sent to San Francisco on August 25 for prosecution. A future court date has reportedly not been set.
Mayer, 36, who has allegedly received more than 20,000 tweets from King was Google’s first female engineer and is now vice president of local, maps and location services, was interviewed by the FBI in April. The affidavit states, “because of some explicit sexual and violent tweets, the victim expressed concern for his/her safety and the safety of his/her spouse. Specific details contained in some of the tweets led the victim to speculate that King had previously done extensive research of the victim including information that was not public, and continued to monitor her activities via the Internet on a daily basis.”
According to the affidavit, the FBI started investigating the case after Google’s corporate security reported the harassment in February. King allegedly used three Twitter accounts, some of the threats came from Virginia while the others were from Texas.
If convicted King could face five years in prison for the threats send through intersate communications and two years for harassing communications. His arraignment date hasn’t been set.
Google refused to comment on the case which has some similarities to another recent one in which a man used Twitter to stalk a leader in a Buddhist community. The suspect, posted more than 8000 tweets threatening and insulting the leader. The victim says she was so affected by the vindictive posts that she refused to leave her Maryland home for a year-and-a-half. The FBI filed a complaint against the suspect in a federal court on charges of online stalking and he is in jail now.