Bulletin: Upoc has erased the "kami" account. This was one of the items we called for in the punchlist of action items Upoc had asked us to give them. We applaud this action, and have re-published our article on "kami."

ADMIN NOTE: This is a long article. It is the result of several years of investigation. Please be patient and, even if you're a Upoc user and think you know the story, read everything carefully, click on all the links and analyze everything presented here. Please feel free to use our "contact us" link to provide any feedback you might have.

The "Kami" Saga... 

Another Upoc user going by the name of "RIPCLAW" went back to prison, after violating his parole. Turns out he was a registered sex offender, a child predator. When this happened, a new character appeared on the Upoc scene, "Kamiko" which at first claimed to be the sister of Ripclaw, was a all-caps typing, cussing like a sailor defender of "her brother Ripclaw." Then "her" demeanor suddenly changed, now "she" was a self-described "sweet lil 17 yr-old Jap girl" and created several usergroups in Upoc, all aimed at teens.

Now a bearhug-bomb dropping, "love for all" preaching host, was "kamiko1" really Ripclaw's sister? Someone else? Below is a screenshot of the original Upoc profile archived on 8/13/2003, click here to view the archive. (Note: Upoc now has google, archive.org and other search engines and archives blocked from indexing its content. Good thing we take screenshots.)

We wonder if the "Brian" referred to here is our Boy Brian Konash... Oh well, no matter. Also you can see two groups aimed at teens there, "Teen Scene" and "Asian Avenue" and when you look at the actual archive, there's alot more. Below is the original profile picture from "kamiko1" which the WaybackMachine didn't catch.

Just who IS this "kami?" Well, we found out. Today, the Upoc handle is l_kami_l and is a darling of Upoc. Its messages are regularly featured by Upoc in its "Overheard in Upoc" blurb, it's a member of several known Upoc employee-owned usergroups, and is agressively promoted and defended by Upoc. Would it shock you to know, it's actually a 40 yr-old MAN Just pretending to be a "sweet lil innocent Jap girl?" Well, it is.

That's right people, for some unknown reason, a 40-something GUY is pretending to be a "sweet lil innocent Jap girl" in Upoc, after spending months trying to defend a convicted child predator whose parole was revoked. We find this disturbing, especially since this guy is hosting usergroups aimed at kids.

In the years of watching this idiot and trying to spread the word, several slip-ups were made by him. First off, several voice messages were sent to a Upoc usergroup from the "Kami" handle, but it was a different female voice almost every time! You can fool some of the people, some of the time. And he did.

But, the worst mistake was posting a sprint picture share link in a Upoc usergroup. When Sprint users do this, anyone with a computer can go to the link to view the photo. Problem is, this also gives you the cellphone number of the one who sent the link. Now, we had something to work with.

But, first things first. We're nothing if not thorough. We first had to verify this phone number was indeed related to the l_kami_l user account on Upoc. This is easier than you might think, and Upoc itself unwittingly helps us here.

We invited this cellphone number to a Upoc usergroup. When one does this, the user account which is validated to the phone comes up on your invite list, not the number invited. This is IF said number is validated to a Upoc user account. The validation process in Upoc works like this:

When creating an account, you have to register a mobile number. The Upoc system sends to your registered phone a four digit code, with the option of either replying "ok" to the message via text from your phone, or simply reading the number and entering it on the website. That's it, proof positive that your phone is associated with the account you created. More than associated, your phone actually IS your Upoc account. If one knows the number, one can easily determine what Upoc username it is.

This flaw is one Upoc created for itself, in their efforts to fight us. Used to be, one didn't have to register a device to use Upoc. One didn't need validation in order to chat, join groups, etc. Upoc instituted this in order to try to reduce the amount of computer users on their service. This also limits Upoc to strictly a North American service, as it doesn't support phones outside the U.S. and Canada.

Amazing the legnths they'll go to, in order to combat anti-predator organizations, isn't it? But that's a different article entirely, back to Kami.

We invited this number so generously provided to us by l_kami_l, and were not surprised at the result. We screengrabbed it all for your perusal:

Above, we've entered the number and are prepared to click the "invite" button

And above is the result: "Your invite was sent to l_kami_l." and also, above that, our invitation list showing and verifying the invite was sent to the l_kami_l account.

Ok, proof positive that the number belongs to our mystery man who is pretending to be a little girl. What's next? Simple, we trace the number and get a name.

We love the intellius service. Below is the screengrab of the cellphone trace report they sent us as the result of our query. Click on the thumbnail to get the full size image:

There you have it, boys and girls. The cellphone number provided in Upoc by l_kami_l is not only validated to the account, it's also billed thru Sprint to one Octaviano Cueto. Things got alot more interesting and fun when we started researching this guy. Our friends at Google and the WaybackMachine at www.archive.org came through for us again. We found out he's "Ocky," a latin hip-hop type performer named Octaviano Cueto Garcia.

First off was the google search on Octaviano, which we have provided a screenshot of below.  It turned out to be very interesting because of the website it led us to, and the fact that today this site doesn't come up in a google search. This could be because this information was previously exposed on Yodigity, over a year ago.

The website linked in the google search illustrated above is for a hispanic hip-hop band called Malo. That's interesting as well, because former Upoc member "MAL0" used to be one of the "enemies" of Kami. We now see that it was a dummy handle created simply to generate traffic for the "Kami" group, Renegadez.

Because, looking at the website and going through the photo albums, a very familiar couple of people are pictured there. The first is known in Upoc as UP0CKING and we screengrabbed his profile back in the summer of 2004:

Look at the picture on his profile, then look at  "Everyday flix group number 3" picture number eight on the "Ocky" website, (click here for the archive of that.) We also have it featured below.

They certianly do appear to be one and the same, don't they.

For practical purposes, all links to malomusic and "Ocky's bio" here are from the Web Archive’s WayBack Machine, http://web.archive.org; This is done in case the site changes or is removed by its owner. (the Web Archive shows a website in the exact same way it was presented when archived) However, we will also provide all the relevant links to the actual site, below:

Malomusic:  

http://malomusic.com/bios/Octaviano.htm (This one has been removed by the site owner.)

HipHop Network:

http://www.hiphop-network.com/ockyworld/

The many images on "Ocky's"  bio pages are also some he has posted in Upoc at various times, including the obviously photoshopped one with him and the Pope. (Click here to see this idiocy.)

The Pope. And Ocky. Puhleese. He may as well have cropped Santa Claus in there instead of himself, for all the believability this mediocre photographic fakery has.

Another well known Upoc user of the time is also featured in Ocky's bio. Take a look at this profile of CHINA_D0LL, then take a look below that at the picture of a girl featured with Ocky in his bio. (click here for the link )

The Similarity is very striking! Compare the two side by side!

On the outside chance that this is all a case of mistaken identity, we decided to have one of our staff call the cellphone number listed as belonging to Cueto and the l_kami_l account in Upoc. We didn't record that call, but here is the transcript of that conversation:

So now we have l_kami_l, MAL0, UP0CKING and CHINA-D0LL all tied in to Octaviano Cueto Garcia. Same images, two different sites. Just a wild coincidence? We don't think so. Neither did respected Upoc user STARR_FOXX, who confronted "Kami" via Upoc text with all this after we originally published it, and offered up this testimonial of what happened.

 Starr_Foxx
Written by Guest on 2006-02-22 17:21:09

Ok, I asked l_kami_l about this, and she confessed to me that most of what is here, is true. She told me that she is Ocky's new girlfriend, and CHINA-D0LL was the original kamiko, and that UP0CKING is Ocky. 
 
This means lKami is really a woman, not a man, and that the cellphone she uses is indeed billed to her boyfriend, Ocky. 
 
I am trying to get her co come clean and be public about this. I really think she should do that, and offer proof, just to put this thing to bed. 
 
Do I believe what l_kami_l said? Not yet, there's too many holes in the story, and I think they tried it out on me to see how it would play. Well, it was only text and it could be anybody man woman or child behind that handle. Kami you really need to prove who you are. You have my number you can call me anytime. 
 
If what you told me is true, then there's no reason to continue to hide. So please, come totally clean with the Upoc community and let's put this all to rest ok?  
 
Monica

That's a pretty sweeping indictment, and although we have no proof that Monica is relating her story accurately, we'll take her word on it. We'll take her word she had this discussion with l_kami_l, but we're not taking this "Kami's" word on anything. We think there IS no girl, we think it's ALL this Cueto Garcia guy, playing all these different characters. But why?

Because, what better way to attract little girls online than to be pretending to be a little girl yourself? Pretending to be an adult female? Pretending to be some good-looking guy who poses for pictures with the Pope?

Remember readers, this all started with "Kami" defending what it claimed to be its brother, RIPCLAW the convicted child molester. When people defend child molesters, or pedophiles, or child predators, they get our full attention.

Here's a screengrab of the current l_kami_l Upoc profile, note the age is listed as 41. The same as Octaviano Cueto Garcia.

See? He'd made the mistake of putting in his actual birthdate when he created the account and at the time, ages didn't automatically show on Upoc user profiles, and the birthdate showing was optional. (see original profile at beginning of this article) There is also no way in Upoc to change that birthdate once the account is created... We know it's a 41 year-old guy, pretending to be a young female.

That's why we are watching, archiving and chronicling everything this "Kami" and all related characters do. There will be more slip-ups, such as the one we're about to start talking about next.

Surrogates

No matter what happens, Upoc is determined to keep the Kami character going and keep traffic to its group "Renegadez" up at all costs. Kami's messages are regularly featured in Upoc's "Overheard in Upoc" blurb on its web pages, and several "character handles" have appeared over the years in Renegadez whose sole purpose is to send invites and generate what they call "drama" in the group.

You can always spot the surrogates and the "character handles" because they never send voice messages or pictures, they send invites to the Renegadez group constantly and they predominantly text message only in the Renegadez group. 

Over the years, every time we've cranked the heat up on "Kami" he typically disappears for awhile, waits out the heat then comes back later. A good example of this is when we called Cueto Garcia on his cellphone, the Kami handle didn't send any messages for months afterword!

There's always a surrogate supplied though, to keep the group up and maintained during the many Kami absenses. The most recent one is the Upoc handle policedog.

We'd known about this handle, it was somewhat active during 2003-2004 but had been gone and almost forgotten until recent months. Now it's the single reason the Renegadez group has any traffic, as he or she spends alot of time messaging there, constantly sending invites to new members, and keeping "drama" aka messaging traffic going.

We screengrabbed policedogs profile back in 2004, it's interesting to look at now, in light of its recent activity:

Take a look at that group list. Policedog was rubbing elbows and hob-knobbing with alot of Upoc staff, management and employees back then. "Upoc Pet Pics," which was then owned by Upoc management member Alex Levine, username alex, "Crazy Stuff I Said" and "coolhunting," founded by Upoc management member Josh Rubin, (jrubin) and "Suggestions" and "TellUpoc" which were owned by customer service staffer Carla Rose (handle, carlarose ) and Upoc management staffer known as pants, respectively.

It's interesting to note that the latter two groups were transferred to the l_kami_l account back in late 2004.

Click here to see the archive of policedog's profile from as recent as Janurary 2005, we've also screengrabbed this below. Notice, this charlatan is in NO usergroups. The handle is inactive. It was "resurrected" recently, merely to serve as another Renegadez character handle and as another "Kami" surrogate.

Today, policedog is merely another in a long line of l_kami_l surrogates, and isn't important enough to really merit any investigation or much notice. But, a little incident happened recently behind the scenes which spilled out into the renegadez group, that we thought was rather fascinating and decided to chronicle it here.

Upoc customer service employees and interns can enter any users account and see their registered cellphone number, and even read their private messages. Yes, that's right. Upoc employees spy on the users worse than the federal government ever "spied" on U.S. Citizens. When you create a Upoc account, your information is shared throughout their management, staff, and even interns. They also send you adware, malware and tracking cookies from doubleclick.net, the most malicious spying company on the internet. But, that's another story entirely.

They have zero value for your privacy at Upoc.

Anyhow, every now and then one of the staffers or interns messes up, and answers a customer service inquiry placed in private to the Monitor handle, with the handle of a regular user they're spying on. (Or in this case, pretending to be.)

The reason we know this is, it's happened to a couple of us, and each time it did the offending Upoc staffer would apologize via private message, making some excuse like "system glitch" or, "I had too many windows open" and so forth.

They read your private messages, people... Sometimes, they even operate the character and surrogate handles in Renegadez...

This happened recently to Cueto Garcia, and he wasn't happy about it. We screenshotted his response, complete with warnings from policedog for him to chill. It's a chuckle, and good reading. See below.

Upoc staff was caught using the l_kami_l handle, and whoever it is now that has that handle validated to his/her phone, wasn't too happy about it. We since verified that "policedog" was indeed, Octaviano Cueto Garcia, the owner of the original "kami" account.

Conclusion

This entire saga is basically old Upoc management protecting, promoting, and helping a sympathizer of a convicted child molestor who is proven to be a 41 yr-old man pretending to be a young "Jap girl" and is doing who knows what else.

Upoc chose to make the Renegadez usergroup a representation of their persistence in using far more effort to fight those who would identify and remove child predators, who would expose the sympathizers and the charlatans, than they ever have or ever would use to actually rid their site of these.

Upoc used to expend far more effort to protect and promote child predators and their sympathizers, than they do removing them. We're glad that's changed, and glad the new Upoc owners and management have chosen the responsible path.

Wonder why that is?