Mineau case takes new twist -- Parents file suit!

We've updated our article on Paul Mineau, a perv who used the Upoc service to locate, groom and eventually meet and have sex with a 14 year-old girl. His enablers and apologists continue to try to blame-shift and otherwise make excuses for this perv, denial and blame-shifting are only too typical in these cases. Now the parents have filed suit against the cellphone carrier, Verizon wireless, in a product liability suit. Here's the story as published in the Hartford Courant:

Girl's Parents Sue Verizon

May 7, 2008
Portland, CT

The parents of a local teenage girl who got into trouble over a cellphone chat service say Verizon Wireless should have warned them that its "America's Choice Family Share Plan" included Internet service and could be dangerous to kids, and have filed a lawsuit against the company.

The girl, who was 14 at the time, met Paul Mineau, then a 30-year-old married man from Groton, in June 2006 over Upoc, a chat service that allows cellphone users to post personal profiles and talk via text messages. After texting for several weeks, the girl agreed to meet Mineau at the movies and local quarries. On two occasions, Mineau entered the girl's bedroom while her parents were sleeping and had sex with her. The girl's parents confronted her after receiving a high cellphone bill, and subsequently read through her text messages, said the family's lawyer, Timothy O'Keefe.

Last year, Mineau, a father of two, was convicted of sexual assault in the case and sentenced to 32 months in prison. The girl, who is described as developmentally delayed, continues to struggle with depression, anxiety and other psychological problems, according to the lawsuit.

"This had a very significant impact," O'Keefe said. "We're trying to hold [Verizon Wireless] accountable for failing to warn this family how this product could be used by their children."

A Verizon spokesman said the company intends to file a response in the coming weeks.

Read our compiliation story, by clicking >here.<

Mobile Web Predator Alert -- Jon Greenberg

Teens and parents, watch out for this admitted mobile web child predator Jonathan Greenberg, who has identities in several mobile web networks such as Upoc, fotochatter and mocospace. He's all over the internet and the mobile web looking for more victims. Here's his mocospace profile: >click to view<

 
We have a detailed report on him, click here for that with all the information, including his groomer chats with teens on Upoc as "INDY_STUD," his denials and many lies, then his nine minute recorded telephone confession. We continue to track this admitted predator of online kids. Beware and also be active, inform the administrators of any site this perv is seen using, exactly what they're harboring. Information is power, and most sites are responsible enough to remove these predators when identified. Do your part to help patrol the web!

Urgent Upoc Predator alert! -- Daniel Charles Harris III

Parents, especially single mothers of 12-16 year-old girls... Beware of this Upoc predator Daniel Charles Harris III. He uses and has used many Upoc handles but is most known for  "DEMON_PUPPY," "EVIL_LIL_PONY" and currently, "SHADOW_DEMON" and "D3MON_PUPPY."

Daniel's method of operation is to "get in good" with the single moms he finds on Upoc, get a mobile web "relationship" going, then sell them his hard-luck pity-me story so he can move there and live with and mooch off of his victims. On three seperate occasions that we know of all the way back to 2002, he has wound up in some kind of police trouble regarding the minor child living in the house.

On one such more recent incident, he exposed himself to two 12 year-old girls, tried to force a kiss on one of them, and pulled a knife on them. Amazingly, the police let him go and no charges were filed!

Harris chooses as victims, the single mothers of little girls. He picks them, initiates contact via the Upoc private message system, and finds out all he can, sizing up his targets.

Harris' criminal record is replete with incidents against minor children, breaking and entering, assault, burglary, drug offenses... He is a habitual, career criminal. We will have a detailed investigative report on this creep very soon. Whatever you do, if you are in contact with this man, get AWAY from him immediately!

 Editorial: We have to be fair.

That's what we do. That's what we're about. Fairness.

In our dealings with Upoc, sometimes it's tough to keep in mind the magnitude of the problem, and the woefully small amount of resources Upoc has, to deal with them. Their customer service staff is inundated daily with requests for username changes, lost passwords, and any number of other, ancillary requests. We estimate that even on a slow day, they deal with at least 1000 support requests, probably four times that on a busy day.

That said, we still believe not enough of the EASY things are being done to address the problem of predators using the service to troll for underage kids for sexual assault encounters.

A few months ago, Upoc requested from us a "punchlist" of suggestions and ideas to improve the situation and help make Upoc a hostile environment for those who would prey on kids. We rapidly crafted this list, and sent if off. None of the suggestions were taken and we also never heard back from them further on the list.

It's pretty frustrating because most of what we suggested is easy to implement, and would have the added benefit of lightening their customer service workload. We can't help but wonder why this punchlist hasn't been addressed, and why there hasn't even been any feedback about it.

We won't publish here what the punchlist included, but be assured it included simple, common sense items which we think would help the situation immensely.

Upoc: Where are we on this? Are you really serious about cleaning up your community, or is all of this a dog and pony show, appeasement and containment?

Upoc "thong boy" pleaded guilty, gets 10 years Federal.

It took Joseph K. Turner, aka "JiggyJoe" from Upoc and fotochatter, over a year in jail to realize they really weren't playing around. He agreed to plea guilty to charges related to a citizen group/FBI sting he was caught in during the summer of '06, and will be sentenced to 10 years in the federal penitentiary this October. Ten years, in the Federal system means.... Ten years. No parole, no probation, no time off for "good behavior" no nothing. And that's as it should be for these predators.

Turner was an avid Upoc and fotochatter user, he's one of thousands of pervs who use Upoc and other mobile web services to locate little kids for sexual assault encounters.

Click >here< for our original write-up on this perv, which includes the FBI press release and a TV station video, and click >here< to read the FBI press release on the plea agreement.
 

The Upoc legacy -- Shameful parade of Upoc pervs.

Parents, look at these creeps. All online seekers of kids for sexual assault encounters, all using the mobile web to contact kids through their cellphones. They are examples of what permeates Upoc and other mobile web services. Some of these are in jail where they belong, others still out there trolling for and grooming little kids. Click on their picture to read their stories...
 

Typical, everyday mobile web perv:

We found this perv on Upoc  >click< after it was reported to us and other mobile web users, as this perv was asking in open chat groups where he could find underage girls through their moms.

Upoc erased this perp's account, TEN hours after it was reported to them. Of course, we don't know that action wasn't taken sooner, that only the account holder and Upoc know about. Upoc WILL cooperate and remove these pervs when reported.

This is a typical, every day mobile web perv, thousands of which make Upoc and other mobile chat sites their home. Most of which however, aren't as blatant as this one. See screengrab of his profile below:

Looks like he has no problem at all, advertising what he's looking for. They removed him, but he'll be back and be alot more careful. If Upoc would cooperate with anti-predator citizen's groups and allow stings, guys like this one would find themselves in jail where they belong.Looks like he had no worries at all, stating on his profile what he was looking for. Too bad he'll never be caught, now. He'll come back with another account, probably much more subtle the second ti

On your TV soon -- Another Upoc perv caught!

Upoc perv William Rowell, going by the handle  Wolfknight671 is in jail, serving six years for showing up at a Dateline NBC sting house to have sex with what he thought was a little girl he'd found, contacted and groomed for the meet via  the internet. It's yet another example of what permeates Upoc and other mobile web services, guys who use the service to seek out underage kids for sexual assault encounters.

Go here (click) to read all about this creep, and we think you'll agree with us when we say we're glad he's off the street and off the internet for a long, long time.

Update on the "Kami" caper...

We've removed this article from public view, pending  a major re-write with additional information. Everything we've asserted and proven was correct, however the additional information casts a whole new light on this topic. Keep watching this space, for the future, updated article.

One more time...

Semantics exists, and it's often disregarded. That's when someone says something in terms that either people might not understand, or is easily twisted to make it seem to mean what others want it to mean.

Our previous name, "Boycott Upoc" is an example of this. We often see people asking rhetorically in the Upoc site, that "if they're boycotting upoc what are they doing here." Well, that question shows either total ignorance, or total dishonesty, or both.

We have never advocated nor have we asked for people to stop using the Upoc service. Quite the opposite, actually. Our boycott is an economic one, we want people to contact Upoc's carriers and channel advertisers, point them here, so they will get educated on the kind of content they're helping peddle to kids.

With this in mind, we sometime back included this question in our FAQs and now today we're unveiling our new Action Items page. This page lines out in simple terms what we as an organization would like to see people do. Quitting, leaving, or ceasing to use the service isn't now, nor has ever been on that list. Click here to read the action items, and please feel free to get involved.

Fun with anonymous feedback morons

We have a feedback page here, "Contact Us" in the left panel, where readers can ask questions or make comments. We get 30-40 such messages a day, and once in awhile we even add one of these to our FAQs . The example here is one such we get all the time, probably from the same moron. He never gives a valid email address for us to reply to, so we thought we'd publicly display his towering, titanic stupidity here, and also give him an answer. Here's his latest idiocy:

> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: Boycott Upoc: not upoc\'s fault
> From: John <beselfresponsible @ nyb. com>
> Date: Thu, November 30, 2006 11:20 pm
> To: admin @ boycottupoc. com
>
> This is an enquiry e-mail via http://www. boycottupoc. com from:
> John <beselfresponsible @ nyb.com>
>
> again here we are blaming everyone and everything else for our shortcomings. teach your kids and watch over them, you idiots. it's not upocs job to parent your kids. ITS YOURS. NOW GET ON YOUR JOB AND STOP WASTING TIME DUMBASS.

After we finished cleaning our laugh-sprayed Dr. Pepper off our keyboards and re-set and silenced the alarm on our moronoscope, we attempted to reply. Unlike John here, we also believe in literacy. We fear for John's kids, hoping he made sure they were taught how to write. Clearly he wasn't.

> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: RE: Boycott Upoc: not upoc\'s fault
> From: admin @ boycottupoc. com
> Date: Fri, December 01, 2006 9:14 am
> To: John <beselfresponsible @ nyb. com>

On the slim chance that yours is a legitimate email address, I'll reply.

Did you read the FAQs on our site? No one is trying to take
responsibility from the parents, it's quite the opposite. BUT if
parents don't KNOW of a specific threat, how can they prepare for it?

That's part of the goal of the site, to educate parents about the danger
Upoc is to their kids. And Upoc IS a danger to the kids, because of
THEIR irresponsibility and THEIR harboring, enabling, and outright
helping of identified, proven child predators.

Thanks for the look and the comments. Feel free to visit our forum and
discuss more there, if you wish.

Regards, BoycottUpoc

We're not surprised -- Another Upoc perv caught 

Once again we see another child predator using the Upoc service to locate, groom and eventually assault a young teen. This case in point happened in Connecticut.

Here's the as-published story on this latest one, from the Hartford Courant :

Sexual Assault Charges Filed
By JOSH KOVNER
Courant Staff Writer

September 6 2006

PORTLAND -- A 30-year-old father of two has confessed to town police that he twice had sexual intercourse with a 14-year-old girl he met through a cellphone chat service, in which users post personal profiles and communicate through text messages, court records state.

Paul Mineau, of Groton, was charged on a warrant with two counts of second-degree sexual assault and risk of injury to a minor, both felonies. The girl and her parents live in Portland.

Mineau turned himself in at Portland police headquarters Tuesday morning and was arraigned later in the day in Superior Court in Middletown. He was jailed, with bail set at $25,000. He is due back in court Sept. 14.

Portland police Sgt. James Kelly obtained the arrest warrant after a two-month investigation. The parents of the girl contacted police after confronting their daughter about a high cellphone bill.

In a written, signed statement to Kelly, Mineau, the married father of a son and a daughter, said he and the girl began communicating over Upoc, a worldwide chat service that users can download onto their cellphones.

"You set up profiles, you can have pictures transmitted and send text messages. It's like a cellphone version of MySpace.com," said Lt. Ronald Milardo.

Mineau's profile said he was into "playin' guitar, music, mountain biking, and lots of healthy sex, LOL [laugh out loud]." Hers said she liked "guys, sports, having fun and singing." Each profile included a first name, home state and date of birth.

After text-messaging for a couple of weeks, "messages from Paul became more intimate," the girl told Kelly, according to the warrant. "He said he wanted to meet me in person. I was a little uncomfortable in meeting him, but he was pushy and kept asking me."

They met at the quarries in Portland and at the movies in Middletown. They twice had late-night sex in July in the girl's bedroom, while her parents were home, according to Kelly's warrant affidavit.

"We believe the parents were asleep," Milardo said.

The girl's account confirmed Mineau's version, the affidavit states. The girl told Kelly that she lives with her father and stepmother, and had moved to Portland a few years ago after being sexually assaulted by her stepfather.

In her statement to Kelly, she said: "Based on these incidents with my stepfather, I view men as a means of sex only, and need to and want to hear that I am loved and cared for by them," the warrant states.

Kelly obtained printouts of the text messages between Mineau and the girl and traced him through his cellphone number. With the assistance of Mineau's wife, Kelly found him at a job site in Ledyard, and took a statement from him at Groton police headquarters in late July.