March 29, 2025 • 41 mins
Kayla faces down her harasser in court. In New Zealand, an investigator summons a global army of hackers.
For official transcripts and additional information on this series, go to bloomberg.com/levittown
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
A quick note, This is episode five of a six
part series. If you haven't heard the prior episodes, we
recommend going back and starting there. It should also be
noted that this series explores sexualized imagery involving miners and violence.
Please take care when listening. How did you feel when
(00:35):
you heard the name Patrick Carrey?
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Overall like sharkeed, Like completely sharcked.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
I was sitting with Kayla back where the story began.
We were in her living room, a couple miles from
the basement where Patrick Carey had wreaked havoc on the
young woman of Levett Town. Kayla remember, was the first
person to learn from her father that she was on
the website, and she later came to learn that Patrick
(01:08):
Carey was the person behind the faked photos of her.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
This kid would DM me all the time and also
like swipe up on my Instagram stories. He never gave
strange vibes to me, So when I heard his name,
I'm like, are we thinking the same Patrick Carrey? Because
that's insane?
Speaker 1 (01:33):
And how did learning who was behind the website change
your perspective on the situation.
Speaker 3 (01:40):
I think that made it even worse for Kayla.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
His actions had real world consequences.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
It completely altered the way that I thought about my body.
I used to feel so confident about it. I felt
so in tune with my body, and then it completely changed.
I started having eating issues. I would eat two baits
and feel absolutely disgusted in what I'm eating and disgusted
(02:08):
in my body for wanting food.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
What Patrick had done to Kayla's pictures online worked on
Kayla offline. He had manipulated her images, played with and
altered her body to suit himself, and in turn, she
was changed. She had to figure out who she was
(02:31):
now in the aftermath of his campaign. She sought help,
did the work, and eventually learned how to cope.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
It took a long time for me to get there.
It took a lot out of me, and I'm never
going to get the old person back, like I'm a
whole new person now.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
In a comic book, this would be her origin story.
Speaker 4 (03:02):
This is New at five right here a disturbing arrest
on Long Island. Some of the details are just too
graphic for TV, but what we can tell you is
that a young man is charge of posting explicit images
of underage women online, allegedly taking their faces in personal
info and then posting them to pornographic websites.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
In December twenty twenty two, Patrick Carey pleaded guilty. During
his court appearances, he had to face not only the judge,
but also the survivors and their families, which was closely
covered by local New York news.
Speaker 4 (03:37):
The mother of one victim sat in court today as Carrie,
twenty years old, faced dozens of charges including child pornography, harassment,
and stalking.
Speaker 5 (03:47):
Because this is just terrible. It's horrible, and it's affected
these girls, like you can't even imagine. These are good girls,
they're in college. It's just horrible what this animal has done.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
I was wearing this long gray dress because I didn't
want him to see my body.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
When Kayla showed up at the Nassau County Courthouse, she
stood out here a vibrant shade of orange.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
I didn't want any part of my skin showing because
I was scared that he would look at me and
instantly start thinking something or even saying something to me.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
She walked into the building by herself and made her
way through the halls.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
It was really like gloomy in there, and it was
a tiny little room. He was already in there, sitting down,
and there was only one seat left and it was
right next to him.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
Kayla froze. He was just.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
There with no handcuffs, no lawyer next to him, all
by himself. He didn't have any family with him. I
had no family with me because they were all working and.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
Busy, so nobody could come with me. And I was
really scared.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
And then I saw him, and it was like a
fire or flight in my body, and quite honestly, it
was probably the scariest moment. I instantly went into a
panic attack. I ended up staying outside in the hallway
because I just could not bring myself to walk past
him have him look at me. Even though he wouldn't
(05:35):
look at me, He kept his head down the whole
entire time.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
It had been more than two years since she had
first seen the website, and now, after all this time,
Kayla found herself in the same room as the person
who had gone after her. Even as she felt the
panic rise up, she also felt herself growing more and
more furious.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
He's maybe didn't physically hurt someone, but he mentally and
emotionally abused us, And the fact that they're just letting
him be out there with no one attending him, with
no handcuffs. It was very angering that I just I
had nowhere else to go, and it was very hurtful.
(06:24):
I felt like it was like a smack in the face, like, oh,
here we go again.
Speaker 3 (06:28):
I have to deal with him.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
And for that to be the first court appearance that
I went to, and that's already how I was starting off,
it really set the tone that like, okay, like I
really got to be prepared for these next court appearances,
because this is what could happen next time I found
by myself.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
One day in court, a father of one of the
victims was physically restrained from trying to attack Patrick. At
another prosecutors read several of Patrick's more graphic posts out loud,
and his father, a former NYPD detective, left the courtroom
visibly distressed. Kayla showed up almost every day. Then she
(07:13):
did what at first had felt unthinkable. She chose to
face him. She remembers when she decided what she was
going to say, it.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
Was actually in the shower. It was like struggling to
figure out what I already said I was going to
do it. A victim impacts the ement, but I didn't
really know exactly what I wanted to say, and it
was really angering me.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
And I was so low.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
I was like sitting down in my shower, just letting
the hot water hit me. And then it just hit me,
and I took out my phone and I just started
writing at my notes and I did not stop. Like
I wrote the whole entire thing, partably in five minutes.
I said it to myself three times and I was like,
this is the speech.
Speaker 3 (07:59):
It seemed.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
And hearings, victims are invited to share an impact statement
to help the judge determine the correct punishment. Kayla was
the only victim to read a statement at Patrick's sentencing.
She felt nervous, but she got up from her seat
in the courtroom and walked to the podium in front
of the judge, about twenty feet from Patrick. Her hands
(08:25):
shook so much she could barely read her own handwriting.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
I think the shaking wasn't the nerves, it was the
anger in me. And I just needed to breathe, and
I did that. I had to pretend nobody was in
the room and I was just speaking from my heart.
I stared directly at him, and he would not look
at me. He kept looking straight ahead, and just like down,
(08:51):
he refused to look at me. He was looking at
his hands. But the whole time I spoke, I looked
at him, the whole entire time. But it was the
hard thing ever, because I didn't want him to know
my emotions. I don't like people knowing my emotions already
as it is, but having him know my emotions felt
(09:12):
like a very vulnerable.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
You can say no to the next question, but we
have your victim impact statement. Would you feel comfortable reading
it out?
Speaker 2 (09:27):
Thinks I hear it here, I can safely say you
are the weakest person in the room, not any of
the victims. You had to sit behind an electronic device
to say how you felt. I am the strongest person
in the room because I am looking you directly in
the face to tell you that you discuss me. You
(09:48):
hurt me, but you've also changed me. You completely changed
the way that I viewed myself and my body, and
for that, I'll never forgive you your name, will forever
give me night and haunt me. You have non idea
what you have done to me mentally and physically, But
at least I am strong enough to be able to
tell you this.
Speaker 3 (10:07):
To your face.
Speaker 2 (10:08):
You make me sick like you make others, and I
promise you that will never change. I hope you remember that.
Now I have to heal my inner child because you
couldn't hold back on your sexual desires and thoughts.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
How do you feel reading that again?
Speaker 2 (10:25):
Empowered?
Speaker 1 (10:27):
Empowered in what way.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
That I was able to actually stand up in front
of him and speak my mind. Every single thing that
I wrote in that statement was completely correct. Like he
is disgusting to me. Still, I'll never forgive him.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
There were dozens of young women who were targeted by
him on that website, but only a few of them
decided to be involved in the criminal case. Why did
you want to be involved in it?
Speaker 2 (10:59):
Because someone needs to speak out. I already went through
trying to be quiet about it and trying to push
it past, But now finding out that this happened to
so many other.
Speaker 6 (11:08):
Women and.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
The extent that it happened in, Yeah, no, I couldn't
be quiet on that. Also, it's not fair to us
girls that we had to sit here in silence seeing
a website be posted of us and not be able
to do anything, and just have to sit here and
(11:31):
take it. No, that's not fair at all.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
From iHeart Podcasts, Bloomberg and Kaleidoscope, this is Leavettown.
Speaker 3 (11:47):
I'm Olivia Cavell and I'm Maggie Murphy. Then it was
Patrick Carey's turn to speak. Patrick wouldn't talk to us
for this podcast, so we're having a voice actor read
some of his statement here.
Speaker 6 (12:06):
Before the court. I can say endlessly, how I regret
what I have done for the rest of my life.
How I wish I could take it all back, not
just because of the legal and social repercussions, but the
regret that I failed my basic responsibility as a decent
member of society. Thirty forty fifty years from now, I
(12:26):
will still be reflecting and atoning simply to feel good
about myself. Still, from this point on, it is up
to me to show to the court and the people
that care about me that I can do better. I
can't chalk up my awful behavior to being a young,
dumb kid. I have to address my own social and
mental issues that got me here in the first place.
(12:48):
Only consistently within a lifestyle of discipline, empathy, and routine
for a long time, can I prove I'm worthy of
some capacity of trust. And finally to my many victims
and their families, if you want to hear anything from
me at all, I would want my last words to
be that I do not expect forgiveness. I'm just sorry.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
He apologized, and like that's worth nothing to me. You
did what you did, and that's that. Like you already
did that. Just because you say I'm sorry, it's not
going to change anything.
Speaker 3 (13:25):
Since Patrick had pleaded guilty to multiple charges, including three felonies,
there wasn't a question about whether he was going to
be punished, only how the punishment would be doled out.
The Nassau County District attorneys, Melissa Scannell and Kelsey Laura,
had worked to have him charged with sex crimes in
part to be sure that he was monitored for as
(13:47):
long as possible. As Kelsey told us.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
We felt very strongly about having him on that sex
offender probation because it's much more stringent than typical probation.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
In the end, he was sentenced to six months in
prison plus ten years probation and a lifetime status as
a registered sex offender, so no smartphones, no device with
a camera without prior approval, and no living within one
thousand feet of a school or a playground, which meant
(14:21):
that when he got out of prison, he'd have to
move out of his mum's house because it was right
behind in elementary school. Before handing down the sentence, the
judge told Patrick, quote, I can only hope that during
your period of incarceration you will reflect and think and
(14:41):
understand about the mental violence and intimate and emotional theft
you did to these young women, and that they will
continue to endure this for many years to come as
a result of your cold and truly despicable behavior. With
Patrick behind bars, Melissa and Kelsey from the District Attorney's
(15:05):
office had one final mission to get the survivors pictures
off the website. Remember, the vast majority of the pictures
and reposts weren't illegal because the law at the time
didn't say anything about posting deep faked nude images even
if the people in them were minors. They were deep fakes.
(15:29):
But now their creator was a convicted sex offender. The
prosecutors thought they might have a shot of convincing the
site administrator to take down the images, but when they
went to the website, they discovered it was gone. Can
you talk about your realization that come on printed pecks
(15:49):
had gone dark.
Speaker 3 (15:52):
So when we realized that the website had gone down,
we were really happy. We thought that that was wonderful.
Speaker 2 (15:59):
This is.
Speaker 3 (16:01):
Like, oh good, somebody else got them. That somebody else
was Will Wallace the PI Back in New Zealand.
Speaker 7 (16:08):
There was kind of a loose collection of information on
the Internet about the website. That period of my life.
I was trying to make a concerted effort to get
the website removed from the Internet.
Speaker 3 (16:22):
While Melissa and Kelsey had been working up charges against
Patrick Carey, Will had turned his focus from catching people
who were posting on the website to trying to get
the whole thing shut down. By this point, Will had
helped solve a few cases and was frankly sick of it,
of the site, the images, the harassment, all of it.
(16:44):
He was tired of playing whack a mole with creeps
and ready to take down the site and the person
responsible for its existence. Will's next step was to try
and figure out who had registered the domain.
Speaker 7 (16:58):
Within a r there is something called who's histories. Whoa's
entries are not very common nowadays. Anyone who registers our
website pretty much gets their information redicted. But one of
the very first entries for come on printed pecks head
and old burner email.
Speaker 3 (17:18):
Burner emails are commonly used by people who want to
hide their identity, So how do you connect a burner
email to an actual person? A massive security breach may
have exposed the social security numbers of millions of Americans
follow the hackers.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
Hackers have breached the email accounts of two dozen organizations.
Speaker 3 (17:38):
Profiles and nearly seven million customers were hacked. Data breaches
a treasure trove of information headline News at the time.
When hackers steal our data from a company, they treat
it like loot, to be sold off for profit, usually
on the dark web. But after a few years the
information is no longer worth much and makes its way
(18:01):
to the broader web. So Will was able to find
an old database of hacked email addresses. He put in
the burner email and found a match. This is how
Will found out that the same burner email that was
used to create common printed picks had also been used
to create an account for cafe press, where you order
(18:21):
matching t shirts for family reunions or bachelorette parties. On
that same database, Will could also see the password to
the Burner account used on cafe press. It was fairly unusual,
not the standard password one two three, and with that
he could essentially run a reverse password search in another
(18:42):
hacked email database.
Speaker 7 (18:44):
The password was of sufficient uniqueness that I could, you know,
boil it down to a number of other email addresses.
Speaker 3 (18:56):
What Will found was a collection of email accounts that
all had that same unlikely password, a decent indication that
they were set up by the same person, and one
of those emails had the name of an actual person,
Scott Trent Coster. Will lipped up the name Scott Trink
(19:18):
Coster appeared to be a real, living person according to
public records, but as far as the Internet was concerned,
Scott Trink Coster didn't really exist. No social media, no LinkedIn, nothing.
Speaker 7 (19:31):
It wasn't quite enough to be like, yeah, this guy
definitely runs the website. So I was like, yeah, I've
got a hunch that this person is perhaps running the website,
but it's not enough. He's a ghost. He's a real ghost,
and he's been very good at remaining as a ghost.
(19:52):
You know, credit to him, I give him credit for that, right.
He tuns through emails uses burners all the time. Some
people are very good at managing to slip through everyone's hands.
Speaker 3 (20:05):
Will needed more than a name, He needed evidence.
Speaker 7 (20:09):
When it comes to investigating anything, really, they always talk
about following the money, and I'm by no means a
financial crime investigator. But the good thing about money is
usually you have to tether an actual identity to kind
of any transaction that takes place, if it involves a
(20:30):
credit card or bank transfer or whatever. Not so much
with crypto, but you know, real money, there's always an
identity behind the transactions.
Speaker 3 (20:40):
So Will went back to the website and looked around.
Speaker 7 (20:44):
There is a portal that allows you to pay to
delete accounts and images on the platform.
Speaker 3 (20:52):
That's right. One thing we haven't mentioned about the tributing
website was that victims could try to get their images
done for a price. The young women in Levittown, as
far as we know, weren't aware of this feature, but
for ninety nine dollars, the website said it would take
down images by request. Will decided to try that way.
(21:13):
In to pay the ninety nine dollars and see where
it took him. He put in his credit card information and.
Speaker 7 (21:20):
The credit card statement came back with a company name.
Speaker 3 (21:25):
Cloud Cyber Services LC. Will found a record for the
company on a British business registry. He saw it was
registered to Scott Trink Costa.
Speaker 7 (21:34):
And I googled it and saw that Scott drink Coaster
was a director of the company. Essentially, it was brilliant.
I was like, I know exactly who runs this website,
even if I don't know a lot about them, but
it was like a milestone for sure.
Speaker 3 (21:50):
Finally Will had found evidence connecting the website where women
and girls all over the world were being abused, degraded,
and docked to Scott. He had also found another company
used by the tributing website in a Louisiana business registry.
He saw it was registered to a person name Scott
(22:10):
Trink cost location, Louisiana, age thirty. With this evidence, Will
began tipping information on Scott to reporters who had previously
written about the website and law enforcement who might be interested.
He also wrote a blog post outlining his findings in detail,
(22:32):
and then crickets.
Speaker 7 (22:36):
I didn't really get any response, which I found really
surprising because in context, the website had certainly been talked
about a lot generally in tabloid newspapers or court documents.
I thought there would be a lot more of an
appetite to prosure it from anyone. Apparently that wasn't the case.
Speaker 3 (22:58):
But Will wasn't ready to give up, not yet. He
wanted to seek justice for the young women and girls
he saw on the site and to hold Scott accountable,
but he needed allies.
Speaker 7 (23:11):
At that point, I was like, well, where ours is
this website being talked about? And that is how I
came to know that read it forum being female hate subs.
Speaker 3 (23:22):
That's after the break. After months, even years of digging
through the dregs of the Internet, Will Wallace had finally
found the person behind the website there had been the
source of so much harm. He thought having the name
(23:45):
behind the site, Scott Drink Costa, would be enough to
hold him accountable, but the authorities didn't seem interested. So
Will when in search of another group of people he
thought might be, and he found them on Reddit, specifically
a subreddit with more than twenty thousand members called ban
(24:06):
Female Hate, a forum created to report misogynistic Reddit groups
that posted non consensual images. It then expanded to become
a watchdog for the Internet writ large. The forum has
tips on how to report abuse and guides to getting
your photos removed. Will saw that one user named Claudia
Lopez had a lot of clout in the forum and
(24:29):
that she was also digging into the same tributing website
he was after. So Will shot her a message.
Speaker 7 (24:36):
I said, look, I know who runs it. I've written
this blog post that outlines how I came to find
the information.
Speaker 3 (24:44):
I thought he was a troll because his new account
was very new to Reddit. Claudia is super mysterious. We
don't know what her real name is. She appears to
live outside the US and types as if she's speaking
through Google Translate. This is me reading our back and forth.
(25:06):
We've put an effect on my voice when I'm reading
back what Claudia wrote. Why do you have to keep
yourself anonymous? I have many enemies. Some show themselves and
others like to be invisible. An attack without warning. Claudia
had been active on the subreddit for a few years.
She says she has helped many women and girls who
(25:29):
have been targets on other tributing websites. This work started
a few years ago, when she says she began tracking
down a pedophile online? Why were you following a pedophile online?
It was the helplessness of seeing teenagers like me suffering
at the hands of these monsters, and no one seemed
to do anything. A minor had to start fighting this
(25:50):
because the people who should be doing it were not.
Did you know the pedophile or their victim?
Speaker 2 (25:56):
Nope?
Speaker 3 (25:57):
He owned another child sexual abuse material website and I
started looking into it. Claudia says she sent email after
email to that website's host, the service that keeps websites
afloat on the Internet, telling them that the site had
child sexual abuse material on it, until she says, they
shut down. After having a website closed, I began to
(26:19):
see comonprinted picks as the next target. I started investigating
the website. I had heard a lot about blackmailing victims
of revenge porn. Scott was dedicated to making money from
the victim's suffering and their hope that the content would
disappear from the forum. After Will messaged her, Claudia immediately
(26:40):
posted a link to his blog on the Reddit sub
with a long screed, a call to arms for its
tens of thousands of members, telling them justice will be
done for all the victims of these psychopaths. A Reddit
army is something to It's impressive and a little alarming
(27:03):
how fast dozens of people can come together with a
singular purpose, in this case, to find Scott Trancosta and
ruin him. They started a vigilante campaign against his tributing website,
lodging a bunch of complaints to its host and domain providers,
(27:24):
hoping they would take it down. Meanwhile, Will messaged a
hacker who he thought could be helpful, a hacker who
goes by the name pompoon Purin. At the time, pompom
Purine was running a major dark web marketplace called breach Forums.
Breach Forums was the largest English language market for hackers
(27:47):
to sell stolen data, enabling the extortion of countless companies
in the US and around the world, and giving cyber
criminals a place to profit off their theft. When I
spoke Toon, he told me Will's case excited him. Palm
and some of his friends started digging and found Scott's
old college email address, hacked into it and found a
(28:10):
photo of Scott's driver's license. With that, they contacted a
sheriff's department in Louisiana, where Scott had once been arrested
for cannabis possession. They requested a copy of his mugshot
and the police report. Palm then created a website called
Scott Trent coostera dot com, which splashed the mugshot across
(28:30):
the landing page. Several hackers and trolls then spammed the
tributing website with the link to Scott Trentkcoster dot com
and began harassing Scott's family with incessant phone calls. One day,
the hackers say the burner number they created specifically to
target Scott and his family rang. The voice on the
(28:52):
end of the line was shrill PI on Yellow Pages.
Speaker 7 (28:58):
Yeah, I am a PI.
Speaker 3 (28:59):
What can I thank you for you? And while we
don't know for sure if it was Scott, he appeared
to be trolling them back, playing them at their own game.
Speaker 2 (29:08):
I just want to be shored.
Speaker 4 (29:09):
Can I do your certificate number?
Speaker 3 (29:14):
The tools of the efficient harassment machine that Scott had
created with the website were now being turned against him.
It was almost like Scott was this Scooby Doo villain
with his mask pulled off. He tried to bat off
redditors and hackers who told me that Scott ended up
putting a filter in his name on the site, so
(29:35):
if they posted a comment mentioning it, it would vanish.
Will and others also went after Scott's income source by
reporting the site to an online advertising company, which pulled
the website's ads. Will then pressure another one of the
website's providers, Di doos Guard to take it down, and then,
(29:55):
after weeks of Will in the Reddit Army's efforts, it
was gone.
Speaker 7 (30:00):
The website experienced an outage, it was no longer retrievable
on the internet.
Speaker 3 (30:07):
De Oscard confirmed to us that it cut its relationship
with the website around that time. It didn't say why
the site went dark.
Speaker 7 (30:14):
I think at that point I was like, oh, yeah, finally,
you know, someone's sort of taken a closer look, or
the hosting providers decided to kick them off, or whatever.
Someone's done their job somewhere along the lines. But as
far as like popping our champagne model or anything like that,
there was nothing like that. But I was quietly, I
was quietly pleased that I managed to get that dump
(30:36):
taken off the internet.
Speaker 3 (30:39):
Will doesn't think that this should become a common practice,
and that all websites should be shut down after a
public campaign. But there are exceptions to every rule, and
to him, this was one.
Speaker 7 (30:51):
I think there needs to be an honest conversation about
what the platform is being used rede and whether that
includes being a safe haven for people who choose to
share child sexual assault material. I think law enforcement need
(31:12):
to decide at what point as the saturation of content
so much so that we need to involve ourselves, Like
this isn't just a pornography website, it is for severe
internet harassment.
Speaker 3 (31:30):
In this case, law enforcement didn't appear to get involved,
and so the online vigilantes banded together and took the reins.
But when this happens online, even among the so called
good guys, you never really know who's behind the keyboard. Pompompurin,
who'd helped coordinate the attack on Scott Trank Costa has
(31:52):
since been arrested himself. In the real world, he was
a twenty year old from Peaschool, New York named con
Brian Fitzpatrick. While Connor was trolling Scott, the FBI was
tracking Connor for running breech forums. They ended up arresting
Connor and charging him with selling stolen data. He pleaded guilty.
(32:15):
It turned out when they confiscated his devices, the FBI
found child sexual abuse material on his computer. Yeah, the
guy going after the other guy for sexual abuse materials
seems to have been consuming similar stuff. Palm is now
twenty two years old, and after a bit of back
and forth, in the end he declined to be interviewed
(32:38):
about his case. What we know is that he was
sentenced to twenty years of supervised release, with the first
two years under house arrest, but the government argued that
the sentence was too lenient, and an appeals court agreed,
ordering that he be re sentenced. Also, as part of
his punishment, he can't use any device connected to the Internet.
(33:00):
The only way I could communicate with him was through
letters sent to his friend, who then snuck them over
to him. From what I gather, his mum and dad
are really strict. If the redditors and hackers' motive was
to expose Scott, their efforts had the opposite effect. Since
(33:20):
the campaign began, Scott has gone further underground. I'm told
by one of the hackers who's seen Scott's financial statements
that he's been airbnb hopping, not staying in one place
for long, Olivia and I still haven't been able to
talk to him, except for one short email exchange. Early
in our reporting, I emailed Scott to say we intended
(33:42):
to name him in a print article we were doing
about the site. Scott responded. He said, quote, if somebody
does not wish to be named or does not wish
to talk, why are you going to mention them in
a story they did not agree to or even publish
it in the first place. Claim that people could now
have their images removed from his site for free. He
(34:04):
asked us not to quote name and shame him. Quote
we ask that you do not write your story and
instead focus on something more important rather than bringing attention
to such a sensitive matter and naming individuals publicly. And
then he signed off, calling me quote weirdo.
Speaker 7 (34:25):
He makes himself out to be the victim. He's just
reverses the victim in a fender and makes himself out
to be the victim and all.
Speaker 3 (34:32):
Of this right, and he's literally made the entire website
is about not only naming and shaming, but showing people
in their most intimate setting without their knowledge. Is that
irony is unbelievable.
Speaker 7 (34:45):
It is It's such a weird projection thing going on there.
Speaker 3 (34:50):
If Will's a terrier, then Scott's the bone he can't
dig up. Within just a couple of weeks of the
site going down, another popped up, same look, same picture's
new name, come on, Printed Picks was now tribute printedpicks
dot com. Claudia the reddit sloof, so she immediately sent
(35:12):
a complaint to the new site server network cloud Flare.
The next day, she says, she got an email from
a strange address. She didn't recognize. My email address was
supposed to be anonymous, so I was totally surprised, and
when I found out it was him, I was doubly surprised.
To her, it appeared to be from Scott. He seemed
(35:33):
to be angry that I submitted an abuse report. I
suspected that he was afraid that his domain would be
suspended again. Claudia showed us the screenshots of the emails. Basically,
the person writing to her wanted Claudia to back off.
The person taunted her, telling her to stop reporting child
sexual abuse material to the site's providers, telling her quote,
(35:58):
a fully closed email is not child abuse. I didn't
give it much important. I don't care that someone I
don't know tries to attack me with ridicule totally repulsive.
The two went back and forth, but then she says,
the person stopped responding. The new website has gone up
(36:23):
and down numerous times since the summer of twenty twenty
three under a few different URLs. Sometimes the site will
be frozen with a note splashed over it asking for
donations and Scott may be in legal trouble now. In
August twenty twenty four, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement
seesed the website and is actively investigating, it, told me,
(36:47):
but what exactly they're probing isn't clear. I periodically check
in with Scott's family. When I rang his mum in
October twenty twenty four, she told me that two Secret
Service agents had showed up looking for her son. They
claimed it was in response to threats he'd made online
against Presidents Joe Biden and Donald Trump. I'd seen a
(37:11):
similar threat posted on the tributing website. In a bizarre outburst,
Scott's mom said she told the Secret Service she hadn't
seen her son in months. The takedown notice on the
website says that it was seized in relation to a
law protecting the life of someone who might be in
imminent danger, and Florida, where the investigation is taking place,
(37:35):
is home to Trump, a previous target of assassinations. Scott's
mum and I talked about what he was like as
a kid, that even in his younger years, he was
very good with computers. He must have been. He helped
develop the website when he was a teenager, around the
same age as Patrick Carey, when he too was coming
(37:57):
of age along the darkest edges of the web.
Speaker 6 (38:12):
So we are now at the location of someone you've
been tracking for a long time.
Speaker 1 (38:18):
Yeah, this guy has been a mystery and enigma for us,
Like we've had so many conversations about Scotch trink Costa,
who he is, why he does what he does. Maggie
and I still wanted to talk to Scott, so we
found his most recent address, a flashy high rise in
downtown Los Angeles.
Speaker 6 (38:38):
Did you see ray in front of us? That's the
building glow.
Speaker 1 (38:46):
This looks like sour on from all of the rings,
like a giant black monolith. Only to find out Scott
didn't live there anymore. Apparently he's still on the move.
But while we were in La looking for him.
Speaker 3 (39:04):
We found something else, So we're heading to an apartment
block in downtown LA to go and see the apartment
that's registered is the address for soul e com Inc.
Which is the owner of Drawn Nudes dot Io.
Speaker 1 (39:25):
We were hearing of more cases like the Livettown one
tied to a handful of deep fake apps. We wanted
to know who was behind them.
Speaker 3 (39:39):
Hi, my name is Margie. Are you crying?
Speaker 1 (39:48):
That's next time on the final episode of Livettown.
Speaker 3 (39:57):
This series is reported and hosted by a Carvill and
Me Margie Murphy. Produced by Kaleidoscope, led by Julia Nutter,
edited by Nedda to Luis som Narni, Producing by Darren
luck Potts. Executive produced by Kate Osborne. Original composition and
mixing by Steve Bone Patrick Kerry Stateman is read by
(40:20):
actor Jackson Ark. Our Bloomberg editors are Caitlin Kenney and
Jeff Grocop. Some additional reporting by Samantha Stewart. Sage Bauman
is Bloomberg's executive producer and head of Podcasting. Kristin Powers
is our senior executive editor from iHeart. Our executive producers
are Tyler Klang and Nicki Etor. Levittown is a production
(40:44):
of Bloomberg, Kaleidoscope and iHeart Podcasts. If you like this show,
give us a follow and tell your friends
A quick note, This is episode five of a six
part series. If you haven't heard the prior episodes, we
recommend going back and starting there. It should also be
noted that this series explores sexualized imagery involving miners and violence.
Please take care when listening. How did you feel when
(00:35):
you heard the name Patrick Carrey?
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Overall like sharkeed, Like completely sharcked.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
I was sitting with Kayla back where the story began.
We were in her living room, a couple miles from
the basement where Patrick Carey had wreaked havoc on the
young woman of Levett Town. Kayla remember, was the first
person to learn from her father that she was on
the website, and she later came to learn that Patrick
(01:08):
Carey was the person behind the faked photos of her.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
This kid would DM me all the time and also
like swipe up on my Instagram stories. He never gave
strange vibes to me, So when I heard his name,
I'm like, are we thinking the same Patrick Carrey? Because
that's insane?
Speaker 1 (01:33):
And how did learning who was behind the website change
your perspective on the situation.
Speaker 3 (01:40):
I think that made it even worse for Kayla.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
His actions had real world consequences.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
It completely altered the way that I thought about my body.
I used to feel so confident about it. I felt
so in tune with my body, and then it completely changed.
I started having eating issues. I would eat two baits
and feel absolutely disgusted in what I'm eating and disgusted
(02:08):
in my body for wanting food.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
What Patrick had done to Kayla's pictures online worked on
Kayla offline. He had manipulated her images, played with and
altered her body to suit himself, and in turn, she
was changed. She had to figure out who she was
(02:31):
now in the aftermath of his campaign. She sought help,
did the work, and eventually learned how to cope.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
It took a long time for me to get there.
It took a lot out of me, and I'm never
going to get the old person back, like I'm a
whole new person now.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
In a comic book, this would be her origin story.
Speaker 4 (03:02):
This is New at five right here a disturbing arrest
on Long Island. Some of the details are just too
graphic for TV, but what we can tell you is
that a young man is charge of posting explicit images
of underage women online, allegedly taking their faces in personal
info and then posting them to pornographic websites.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
In December twenty twenty two, Patrick Carey pleaded guilty. During
his court appearances, he had to face not only the judge,
but also the survivors and their families, which was closely
covered by local New York news.
Speaker 4 (03:37):
The mother of one victim sat in court today as Carrie,
twenty years old, faced dozens of charges including child pornography, harassment,
and stalking.
Speaker 5 (03:47):
Because this is just terrible. It's horrible, and it's affected
these girls, like you can't even imagine. These are good girls,
they're in college. It's just horrible what this animal has done.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
I was wearing this long gray dress because I didn't
want him to see my body.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
When Kayla showed up at the Nassau County Courthouse, she
stood out here a vibrant shade of orange.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
I didn't want any part of my skin showing because
I was scared that he would look at me and
instantly start thinking something or even saying something to me.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
She walked into the building by herself and made her
way through the halls.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
It was really like gloomy in there, and it was
a tiny little room. He was already in there, sitting down,
and there was only one seat left and it was
right next to him.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
Kayla froze. He was just.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
There with no handcuffs, no lawyer next to him, all
by himself. He didn't have any family with him. I
had no family with me because they were all working and.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
Busy, so nobody could come with me. And I was
really scared.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
And then I saw him, and it was like a
fire or flight in my body, and quite honestly, it
was probably the scariest moment. I instantly went into a
panic attack. I ended up staying outside in the hallway
because I just could not bring myself to walk past
him have him look at me. Even though he wouldn't
(05:35):
look at me, He kept his head down the whole
entire time.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
It had been more than two years since she had
first seen the website, and now, after all this time,
Kayla found herself in the same room as the person
who had gone after her. Even as she felt the
panic rise up, she also felt herself growing more and
more furious.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
He's maybe didn't physically hurt someone, but he mentally and
emotionally abused us, And the fact that they're just letting
him be out there with no one attending him, with
no handcuffs. It was very angering that I just I
had nowhere else to go, and it was very hurtful.
(06:24):
I felt like it was like a smack in the face, like, oh,
here we go again.
Speaker 3 (06:28):
I have to deal with him.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
And for that to be the first court appearance that
I went to, and that's already how I was starting off,
it really set the tone that like, okay, like I
really got to be prepared for these next court appearances,
because this is what could happen next time I found
by myself.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
One day in court, a father of one of the
victims was physically restrained from trying to attack Patrick. At
another prosecutors read several of Patrick's more graphic posts out loud,
and his father, a former NYPD detective, left the courtroom
visibly distressed. Kayla showed up almost every day. Then she
(07:13):
did what at first had felt unthinkable. She chose to
face him. She remembers when she decided what she was
going to say, it.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
Was actually in the shower. It was like struggling to
figure out what I already said I was going to
do it. A victim impacts the ement, but I didn't
really know exactly what I wanted to say, and it
was really angering me.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
And I was so low.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
I was like sitting down in my shower, just letting
the hot water hit me. And then it just hit me,
and I took out my phone and I just started
writing at my notes and I did not stop. Like
I wrote the whole entire thing, partably in five minutes.
I said it to myself three times and I was like,
this is the speech.
Speaker 3 (07:59):
It seemed.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
And hearings, victims are invited to share an impact statement
to help the judge determine the correct punishment. Kayla was
the only victim to read a statement at Patrick's sentencing.
She felt nervous, but she got up from her seat
in the courtroom and walked to the podium in front
of the judge, about twenty feet from Patrick. Her hands
(08:25):
shook so much she could barely read her own handwriting.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
I think the shaking wasn't the nerves, it was the
anger in me. And I just needed to breathe, and
I did that. I had to pretend nobody was in
the room and I was just speaking from my heart.
I stared directly at him, and he would not look
at me. He kept looking straight ahead, and just like down,
(08:51):
he refused to look at me. He was looking at
his hands. But the whole time I spoke, I looked
at him, the whole entire time. But it was the
hard thing ever, because I didn't want him to know
my emotions. I don't like people knowing my emotions already
as it is, but having him know my emotions felt
(09:12):
like a very vulnerable.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
You can say no to the next question, but we
have your victim impact statement. Would you feel comfortable reading
it out?
Speaker 2 (09:27):
Thinks I hear it here, I can safely say you
are the weakest person in the room, not any of
the victims. You had to sit behind an electronic device
to say how you felt. I am the strongest person
in the room because I am looking you directly in
the face to tell you that you discuss me. You
(09:48):
hurt me, but you've also changed me. You completely changed
the way that I viewed myself and my body, and
for that, I'll never forgive you your name, will forever
give me night and haunt me. You have non idea
what you have done to me mentally and physically, But
at least I am strong enough to be able to
tell you this.
Speaker 3 (10:07):
To your face.
Speaker 2 (10:08):
You make me sick like you make others, and I
promise you that will never change. I hope you remember that.
Now I have to heal my inner child because you
couldn't hold back on your sexual desires and thoughts.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
How do you feel reading that again?
Speaker 2 (10:25):
Empowered?
Speaker 1 (10:27):
Empowered in what way.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
That I was able to actually stand up in front
of him and speak my mind. Every single thing that
I wrote in that statement was completely correct. Like he
is disgusting to me. Still, I'll never forgive him.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
There were dozens of young women who were targeted by
him on that website, but only a few of them
decided to be involved in the criminal case. Why did
you want to be involved in it?
Speaker 2 (10:59):
Because someone needs to speak out. I already went through
trying to be quiet about it and trying to push
it past, But now finding out that this happened to
so many other.
Speaker 6 (11:08):
Women and.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
The extent that it happened in, Yeah, no, I couldn't
be quiet on that. Also, it's not fair to us
girls that we had to sit here in silence seeing
a website be posted of us and not be able
to do anything, and just have to sit here and
(11:31):
take it. No, that's not fair at all.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
From iHeart Podcasts, Bloomberg and Kaleidoscope, this is Leavettown.
Speaker 3 (11:47):
I'm Olivia Cavell and I'm Maggie Murphy. Then it was
Patrick Carey's turn to speak. Patrick wouldn't talk to us
for this podcast, so we're having a voice actor read
some of his statement here.
Speaker 6 (12:06):
Before the court. I can say endlessly, how I regret
what I have done for the rest of my life.
How I wish I could take it all back, not
just because of the legal and social repercussions, but the
regret that I failed my basic responsibility as a decent
member of society. Thirty forty fifty years from now, I
(12:26):
will still be reflecting and atoning simply to feel good
about myself. Still, from this point on, it is up
to me to show to the court and the people
that care about me that I can do better. I
can't chalk up my awful behavior to being a young,
dumb kid. I have to address my own social and
mental issues that got me here in the first place.
(12:48):
Only consistently within a lifestyle of discipline, empathy, and routine
for a long time, can I prove I'm worthy of
some capacity of trust. And finally to my many victims
and their families, if you want to hear anything from
me at all, I would want my last words to
be that I do not expect forgiveness. I'm just sorry.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
He apologized, and like that's worth nothing to me. You
did what you did, and that's that. Like you already
did that. Just because you say I'm sorry, it's not
going to change anything.
Speaker 3 (13:25):
Since Patrick had pleaded guilty to multiple charges, including three felonies,
there wasn't a question about whether he was going to
be punished, only how the punishment would be doled out.
The Nassau County District attorneys, Melissa Scannell and Kelsey Laura,
had worked to have him charged with sex crimes in
part to be sure that he was monitored for as
(13:47):
long as possible. As Kelsey told us.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
We felt very strongly about having him on that sex
offender probation because it's much more stringent than typical probation.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
In the end, he was sentenced to six months in
prison plus ten years probation and a lifetime status as
a registered sex offender, so no smartphones, no device with
a camera without prior approval, and no living within one
thousand feet of a school or a playground, which meant
(14:21):
that when he got out of prison, he'd have to
move out of his mum's house because it was right
behind in elementary school. Before handing down the sentence, the
judge told Patrick, quote, I can only hope that during
your period of incarceration you will reflect and think and
(14:41):
understand about the mental violence and intimate and emotional theft
you did to these young women, and that they will
continue to endure this for many years to come as
a result of your cold and truly despicable behavior. With
Patrick behind bars, Melissa and Kelsey from the District Attorney's
(15:05):
office had one final mission to get the survivors pictures
off the website. Remember, the vast majority of the pictures
and reposts weren't illegal because the law at the time
didn't say anything about posting deep faked nude images even
if the people in them were minors. They were deep fakes.
(15:29):
But now their creator was a convicted sex offender. The
prosecutors thought they might have a shot of convincing the
site administrator to take down the images, but when they
went to the website, they discovered it was gone. Can
you talk about your realization that come on printed pecks
(15:49):
had gone dark.
Speaker 3 (15:52):
So when we realized that the website had gone down,
we were really happy. We thought that that was wonderful.
Speaker 2 (15:59):
This is.
Speaker 3 (16:01):
Like, oh good, somebody else got them. That somebody else
was Will Wallace the PI Back in New Zealand.
Speaker 7 (16:08):
There was kind of a loose collection of information on
the Internet about the website. That period of my life.
I was trying to make a concerted effort to get
the website removed from the Internet.
Speaker 3 (16:22):
While Melissa and Kelsey had been working up charges against
Patrick Carey, Will had turned his focus from catching people
who were posting on the website to trying to get
the whole thing shut down. By this point, Will had
helped solve a few cases and was frankly sick of it,
of the site, the images, the harassment, all of it.
(16:44):
He was tired of playing whack a mole with creeps
and ready to take down the site and the person
responsible for its existence. Will's next step was to try
and figure out who had registered the domain.
Speaker 7 (16:58):
Within a r there is something called who's histories. Whoa's
entries are not very common nowadays. Anyone who registers our
website pretty much gets their information redicted. But one of
the very first entries for come on printed pecks head
and old burner email.
Speaker 3 (17:18):
Burner emails are commonly used by people who want to
hide their identity, So how do you connect a burner
email to an actual person? A massive security breach may
have exposed the social security numbers of millions of Americans
follow the hackers.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
Hackers have breached the email accounts of two dozen organizations.
Speaker 3 (17:38):
Profiles and nearly seven million customers were hacked. Data breaches
a treasure trove of information headline News at the time.
When hackers steal our data from a company, they treat
it like loot, to be sold off for profit, usually
on the dark web. But after a few years the
information is no longer worth much and makes its way
(18:01):
to the broader web. So Will was able to find
an old database of hacked email addresses. He put in
the burner email and found a match. This is how
Will found out that the same burner email that was
used to create common printed picks had also been used
to create an account for cafe press, where you order
(18:21):
matching t shirts for family reunions or bachelorette parties. On
that same database, Will could also see the password to
the Burner account used on cafe press. It was fairly unusual,
not the standard password one two three, and with that
he could essentially run a reverse password search in another
(18:42):
hacked email database.
Speaker 7 (18:44):
The password was of sufficient uniqueness that I could, you know,
boil it down to a number of other email addresses.
Speaker 3 (18:56):
What Will found was a collection of email accounts that
all had that same unlikely password, a decent indication that
they were set up by the same person, and one
of those emails had the name of an actual person,
Scott Trent Coster. Will lipped up the name Scott Trink
(19:18):
Coster appeared to be a real, living person according to
public records, but as far as the Internet was concerned,
Scott Trink Coster didn't really exist. No social media, no LinkedIn, nothing.
Speaker 7 (19:31):
It wasn't quite enough to be like, yeah, this guy
definitely runs the website. So I was like, yeah, I've
got a hunch that this person is perhaps running the website,
but it's not enough. He's a ghost. He's a real ghost,
and he's been very good at remaining as a ghost.
(19:52):
You know, credit to him, I give him credit for that, right.
He tuns through emails uses burners all the time. Some
people are very good at managing to slip through everyone's hands.
Speaker 3 (20:05):
Will needed more than a name, He needed evidence.
Speaker 7 (20:09):
When it comes to investigating anything, really, they always talk
about following the money, and I'm by no means a
financial crime investigator. But the good thing about money is
usually you have to tether an actual identity to kind
of any transaction that takes place, if it involves a
(20:30):
credit card or bank transfer or whatever. Not so much
with crypto, but you know, real money, there's always an
identity behind the transactions.
Speaker 3 (20:40):
So Will went back to the website and looked around.
Speaker 7 (20:44):
There is a portal that allows you to pay to
delete accounts and images on the platform.
Speaker 3 (20:52):
That's right. One thing we haven't mentioned about the tributing
website was that victims could try to get their images
done for a price. The young women in Levittown, as
far as we know, weren't aware of this feature, but
for ninety nine dollars, the website said it would take
down images by request. Will decided to try that way.
(21:13):
In to pay the ninety nine dollars and see where
it took him. He put in his credit card information and.
Speaker 7 (21:20):
The credit card statement came back with a company name.
Speaker 3 (21:25):
Cloud Cyber Services LC. Will found a record for the
company on a British business registry. He saw it was
registered to Scott Trink Costa.
Speaker 7 (21:34):
And I googled it and saw that Scott drink Coaster
was a director of the company. Essentially, it was brilliant.
I was like, I know exactly who runs this website,
even if I don't know a lot about them, but
it was like a milestone for sure.
Speaker 3 (21:50):
Finally Will had found evidence connecting the website where women
and girls all over the world were being abused, degraded,
and docked to Scott. He had also found another company
used by the tributing website in a Louisiana business registry.
He saw it was registered to a person name Scott
(22:10):
Trink cost location, Louisiana, age thirty. With this evidence, Will
began tipping information on Scott to reporters who had previously
written about the website and law enforcement who might be interested.
He also wrote a blog post outlining his findings in detail,
(22:32):
and then crickets.
Speaker 7 (22:36):
I didn't really get any response, which I found really
surprising because in context, the website had certainly been talked
about a lot generally in tabloid newspapers or court documents.
I thought there would be a lot more of an
appetite to prosure it from anyone. Apparently that wasn't the case.
Speaker 3 (22:58):
But Will wasn't ready to give up, not yet. He
wanted to seek justice for the young women and girls
he saw on the site and to hold Scott accountable,
but he needed allies.
Speaker 7 (23:11):
At that point, I was like, well, where ours is
this website being talked about? And that is how I
came to know that read it forum being female hate subs.
Speaker 3 (23:22):
That's after the break. After months, even years of digging
through the dregs of the Internet, Will Wallace had finally
found the person behind the website there had been the
source of so much harm. He thought having the name
(23:45):
behind the site, Scott Drink Costa, would be enough to
hold him accountable, but the authorities didn't seem interested. So
Will when in search of another group of people he
thought might be, and he found them on Reddit, specifically
a subreddit with more than twenty thousand members called ban
(24:06):
Female Hate, a forum created to report misogynistic Reddit groups
that posted non consensual images. It then expanded to become
a watchdog for the Internet writ large. The forum has
tips on how to report abuse and guides to getting
your photos removed. Will saw that one user named Claudia
Lopez had a lot of clout in the forum and
(24:29):
that she was also digging into the same tributing website
he was after. So Will shot her a message.
Speaker 7 (24:36):
I said, look, I know who runs it. I've written
this blog post that outlines how I came to find
the information.
Speaker 3 (24:44):
I thought he was a troll because his new account
was very new to Reddit. Claudia is super mysterious. We
don't know what her real name is. She appears to
live outside the US and types as if she's speaking
through Google Translate. This is me reading our back and forth.
(25:06):
We've put an effect on my voice when I'm reading
back what Claudia wrote. Why do you have to keep
yourself anonymous? I have many enemies. Some show themselves and
others like to be invisible. An attack without warning. Claudia
had been active on the subreddit for a few years.
She says she has helped many women and girls who
(25:29):
have been targets on other tributing websites. This work started
a few years ago, when she says she began tracking
down a pedophile online? Why were you following a pedophile online?
It was the helplessness of seeing teenagers like me suffering
at the hands of these monsters, and no one seemed
to do anything. A minor had to start fighting this
(25:50):
because the people who should be doing it were not.
Did you know the pedophile or their victim?
Speaker 2 (25:56):
Nope?
Speaker 3 (25:57):
He owned another child sexual abuse material website and I
started looking into it. Claudia says she sent email after
email to that website's host, the service that keeps websites
afloat on the Internet, telling them that the site had
child sexual abuse material on it, until she says, they
shut down. After having a website closed, I began to
(26:19):
see comonprinted picks as the next target. I started investigating
the website. I had heard a lot about blackmailing victims
of revenge porn. Scott was dedicated to making money from
the victim's suffering and their hope that the content would
disappear from the forum. After Will messaged her, Claudia immediately
(26:40):
posted a link to his blog on the Reddit sub
with a long screed, a call to arms for its
tens of thousands of members, telling them justice will be
done for all the victims of these psychopaths. A Reddit
army is something to It's impressive and a little alarming
(27:03):
how fast dozens of people can come together with a
singular purpose, in this case, to find Scott Trancosta and
ruin him. They started a vigilante campaign against his tributing website,
lodging a bunch of complaints to its host and domain providers,
(27:24):
hoping they would take it down. Meanwhile, Will messaged a
hacker who he thought could be helpful, a hacker who
goes by the name pompoon Purin. At the time, pompom
Purine was running a major dark web marketplace called breach Forums.
Breach Forums was the largest English language market for hackers
(27:47):
to sell stolen data, enabling the extortion of countless companies
in the US and around the world, and giving cyber
criminals a place to profit off their theft. When I
spoke Toon, he told me Will's case excited him. Palm
and some of his friends started digging and found Scott's
old college email address, hacked into it and found a
(28:10):
photo of Scott's driver's license. With that, they contacted a
sheriff's department in Louisiana, where Scott had once been arrested
for cannabis possession. They requested a copy of his mugshot
and the police report. Palm then created a website called
Scott Trent coostera dot com, which splashed the mugshot across
(28:30):
the landing page. Several hackers and trolls then spammed the
tributing website with the link to Scott Trentkcoster dot com
and began harassing Scott's family with incessant phone calls. One day,
the hackers say the burner number they created specifically to
target Scott and his family rang. The voice on the
(28:52):
end of the line was shrill PI on Yellow Pages.
Speaker 7 (28:58):
Yeah, I am a PI.
Speaker 3 (28:59):
What can I thank you for you? And while we
don't know for sure if it was Scott, he appeared
to be trolling them back, playing them at their own game.
Speaker 2 (29:08):
I just want to be shored.
Speaker 4 (29:09):
Can I do your certificate number?
Speaker 3 (29:14):
The tools of the efficient harassment machine that Scott had
created with the website were now being turned against him.
It was almost like Scott was this Scooby Doo villain
with his mask pulled off. He tried to bat off
redditors and hackers who told me that Scott ended up
putting a filter in his name on the site, so
(29:35):
if they posted a comment mentioning it, it would vanish.
Will and others also went after Scott's income source by
reporting the site to an online advertising company, which pulled
the website's ads. Will then pressure another one of the
website's providers, Di doos Guard to take it down, and then,
(29:55):
after weeks of Will in the Reddit Army's efforts, it
was gone.
Speaker 7 (30:00):
The website experienced an outage, it was no longer retrievable
on the internet.
Speaker 3 (30:07):
De Oscard confirmed to us that it cut its relationship
with the website around that time. It didn't say why
the site went dark.
Speaker 7 (30:14):
I think at that point I was like, oh, yeah, finally,
you know, someone's sort of taken a closer look, or
the hosting providers decided to kick them off, or whatever.
Someone's done their job somewhere along the lines. But as
far as like popping our champagne model or anything like that,
there was nothing like that. But I was quietly, I
was quietly pleased that I managed to get that dump
(30:36):
taken off the internet.
Speaker 3 (30:39):
Will doesn't think that this should become a common practice,
and that all websites should be shut down after a
public campaign. But there are exceptions to every rule, and
to him, this was one.
Speaker 7 (30:51):
I think there needs to be an honest conversation about
what the platform is being used rede and whether that
includes being a safe haven for people who choose to
share child sexual assault material. I think law enforcement need
(31:12):
to decide at what point as the saturation of content
so much so that we need to involve ourselves, Like
this isn't just a pornography website, it is for severe
internet harassment.
Speaker 3 (31:30):
In this case, law enforcement didn't appear to get involved,
and so the online vigilantes banded together and took the reins.
But when this happens online, even among the so called
good guys, you never really know who's behind the keyboard. Pompompurin,
who'd helped coordinate the attack on Scott Trank Costa has
(31:52):
since been arrested himself. In the real world, he was
a twenty year old from Peaschool, New York named con
Brian Fitzpatrick. While Connor was trolling Scott, the FBI was
tracking Connor for running breech forums. They ended up arresting
Connor and charging him with selling stolen data. He pleaded guilty.
(32:15):
It turned out when they confiscated his devices, the FBI
found child sexual abuse material on his computer. Yeah, the
guy going after the other guy for sexual abuse materials
seems to have been consuming similar stuff. Palm is now
twenty two years old, and after a bit of back
and forth, in the end he declined to be interviewed
(32:38):
about his case. What we know is that he was
sentenced to twenty years of supervised release, with the first
two years under house arrest, but the government argued that
the sentence was too lenient, and an appeals court agreed,
ordering that he be re sentenced. Also, as part of
his punishment, he can't use any device connected to the Internet.
(33:00):
The only way I could communicate with him was through
letters sent to his friend, who then snuck them over
to him. From what I gather, his mum and dad
are really strict. If the redditors and hackers' motive was
to expose Scott, their efforts had the opposite effect. Since
(33:20):
the campaign began, Scott has gone further underground. I'm told
by one of the hackers who's seen Scott's financial statements
that he's been airbnb hopping, not staying in one place
for long, Olivia and I still haven't been able to
talk to him, except for one short email exchange. Early
in our reporting, I emailed Scott to say we intended
(33:42):
to name him in a print article we were doing
about the site. Scott responded. He said, quote, if somebody
does not wish to be named or does not wish
to talk, why are you going to mention them in
a story they did not agree to or even publish
it in the first place. Claim that people could now
have their images removed from his site for free. He
(34:04):
asked us not to quote name and shame him. Quote
we ask that you do not write your story and
instead focus on something more important rather than bringing attention
to such a sensitive matter and naming individuals publicly. And
then he signed off, calling me quote weirdo.
Speaker 7 (34:25):
He makes himself out to be the victim. He's just
reverses the victim in a fender and makes himself out
to be the victim and all.
Speaker 3 (34:32):
Of this right, and he's literally made the entire website
is about not only naming and shaming, but showing people
in their most intimate setting without their knowledge. Is that
irony is unbelievable.
Speaker 7 (34:45):
It is It's such a weird projection thing going on there.
Speaker 3 (34:50):
If Will's a terrier, then Scott's the bone he can't
dig up. Within just a couple of weeks of the
site going down, another popped up, same look, same picture's
new name, come on, Printed Picks was now tribute printedpicks
dot com. Claudia the reddit sloof, so she immediately sent
(35:12):
a complaint to the new site server network cloud Flare.
The next day, she says, she got an email from
a strange address. She didn't recognize. My email address was
supposed to be anonymous, so I was totally surprised, and
when I found out it was him, I was doubly surprised.
To her, it appeared to be from Scott. He seemed
(35:33):
to be angry that I submitted an abuse report. I
suspected that he was afraid that his domain would be
suspended again. Claudia showed us the screenshots of the emails. Basically,
the person writing to her wanted Claudia to back off.
The person taunted her, telling her to stop reporting child
sexual abuse material to the site's providers, telling her quote,
(35:58):
a fully closed email is not child abuse. I didn't
give it much important. I don't care that someone I
don't know tries to attack me with ridicule totally repulsive.
The two went back and forth, but then she says,
the person stopped responding. The new website has gone up
(36:23):
and down numerous times since the summer of twenty twenty
three under a few different URLs. Sometimes the site will
be frozen with a note splashed over it asking for
donations and Scott may be in legal trouble now. In
August twenty twenty four, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement
seesed the website and is actively investigating, it, told me,
(36:47):
but what exactly they're probing isn't clear. I periodically check
in with Scott's family. When I rang his mum in
October twenty twenty four, she told me that two Secret
Service agents had showed up looking for her son. They
claimed it was in response to threats he'd made online
against Presidents Joe Biden and Donald Trump. I'd seen a
(37:11):
similar threat posted on the tributing website. In a bizarre outburst,
Scott's mom said she told the Secret Service she hadn't
seen her son in months. The takedown notice on the
website says that it was seized in relation to a
law protecting the life of someone who might be in
imminent danger, and Florida, where the investigation is taking place,
(37:35):
is home to Trump, a previous target of assassinations. Scott's
mum and I talked about what he was like as
a kid, that even in his younger years, he was
very good with computers. He must have been. He helped
develop the website when he was a teenager, around the
same age as Patrick Carey, when he too was coming
(37:57):
of age along the darkest edges of the web.
Speaker 6 (38:12):
So we are now at the location of someone you've
been tracking for a long time.
Speaker 1 (38:18):
Yeah, this guy has been a mystery and enigma for us,
Like we've had so many conversations about Scotch trink Costa,
who he is, why he does what he does. Maggie
and I still wanted to talk to Scott, so we
found his most recent address, a flashy high rise in
downtown Los Angeles.
Speaker 6 (38:38):
Did you see ray in front of us? That's the
building glow.
Speaker 1 (38:46):
This looks like sour on from all of the rings,
like a giant black monolith. Only to find out Scott
didn't live there anymore. Apparently he's still on the move.
But while we were in La looking for him.
Speaker 3 (39:04):
We found something else, So we're heading to an apartment
block in downtown LA to go and see the apartment
that's registered is the address for soul e com Inc.
Which is the owner of Drawn Nudes dot Io.
Speaker 1 (39:25):
We were hearing of more cases like the Livettown one
tied to a handful of deep fake apps. We wanted
to know who was behind them.
Speaker 3 (39:39):
Hi, my name is Margie. Are you crying?
Speaker 1 (39:48):
That's next time on the final episode of Livettown.
Speaker 3 (39:57):
This series is reported and hosted by a Carvill and
Me Margie Murphy. Produced by Kaleidoscope, led by Julia Nutter,
edited by Nedda to Luis som Narni, Producing by Darren
luck Potts. Executive produced by Kate Osborne. Original composition and
mixing by Steve Bone Patrick Kerry Stateman is read by
(40:20):
actor Jackson Ark. Our Bloomberg editors are Caitlin Kenney and
Jeff Grocop. Some additional reporting by Samantha Stewart. Sage Bauman
is Bloomberg's executive producer and head of Podcasting. Kristin Powers
is our senior executive editor from iHeart. Our executive producers
are Tyler Klang and Nicki Etor. Levittown is a production
(40:44):
of Bloomberg, Kaleidoscope and iHeart Podcasts. If you like this show,
give us a follow and tell your friends
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