Pranknet is a Canadian-based
anonymous prank calling
virtual community responsible for
damage to hotels and fast food restaurants of more than
$60,000 as well as multiple instances of telephone
harassment. It was founded by a man referring to himself as
"Dex" (alleged to be a Canadian man named Tariq Malik) in 2000. The
group has been linked to nearly 60 separate incidents.
Posing as
authority figures, such as fire alarm company representatives and hotel
corporate managers, Pranknet participants called unsuspecting
employees and customers in the United States
and tricked them into damaging property, setting
off fire sprinklers and other
humiliating acts such as disrobing. Pranknet members can
listen in real-time and discuss the progress together in a private
chat room.
A wave of
the pranks across the United States prompted internal alerts by
Choice Hotels, as well as advisories
by the Orange County,
Florida
Sherriff's office, as well as others.
Law
enforcement officials from a number of jurisdictions are currently
investigating the various incidents, but no information has been
given as to whether the Royal Canadian Mounted Police
will begin an investigation. The Federal Bureau
of Investigation
has been investigating the various incidents as
well as the identity of "Dex".
Technology
Pranknet participants use
Skype to make their
calls. As of 2009, Skype provides an uncontrolled registration
system for users with absolutely no proof of identity, permitting
users to use the system in an anonymous and difficult-to-trace
manner. Members chat before, during, and after each prank via
Beyluxe Messenger, which is owned and
operated outside
North America.
Audiences range from 40 to 200 people at any given time. Prior to
using Beyluxe, Pranknet used
Paltalk for its
chats, however Paltalk banned Pranknet after a February 2009
KFC incident. After Pranknet users were banned
from Paltalk, the company was subjected to multiple
DDoS attacks.
Pranks that create sufficient havoc are posted on
YouTube. Updates are also provided through a
Twitter account.
Key members
Pranknet participants were successful in maintaining anonymity
until August, 2009 when
The Smoking
Gun published the names, biographies and locations of
Pranknet’s founder Tariq Malik and a number of prolific members.
Malik and other Pranknet members had regularly taunted victims and
others, saying they were untraceable.
Tariq Malik
Malik, age
25 in 2009, is unemployed and lives with his mother in a small
apartment in Windsor,
Ontario
, a block from the Detroit
River. They moved there in late 2008. Neighbors have
only seen him once or twice during this time and some did not even
realize he lived there. He claims that his father died around 2000
and that he has very little money. He steals
Wi-Fi from his neighbors. He regards his victims as
brainless sheep.
According to TSG, Malik is PrankNet leader "Dex" (a tribute to the
character
Dexter Morgan, a
serial killer character on television).
However, in an interview with
The Globe and Mail, "Dex"
denied he was Malik (but confirmed he is Canadian).
Officials in at least four U.S. States and six U.S. cities are
considering charges against Malik and his possible
extradition to the United States to face
trial.
William Marquis
Marquis,
age 51 in 2009, lives in Scarborough, Ontario
. Known as Hempster, he is Pranknet’s "second
in command": Marquis pays expenses, solicits money for Malik,
offers prizes to members who successfully game their victims, and
enforces chat-room rules by kicking out rule violators. He was
arrested in 1992 as part of a
hydroponic
marijuana growing ring; the charges were
later dropped. He was convicted in 2004 for
drunk driving and in 2005 for
marijuana production.
CBC News attempted to interview Marquis
regarding these allegations, however he did not answer his
door.
James Tyler Markle
Markle,
age 18 in 2009, lived in a trailer in rural Diboll, Texas
with his mother and stepfather. He
participates in Pranknet using the name "Prankster" and is one of
the groups most prolific callers. He claims making the calls is his
job. Prior to The Smoking Gun story on August 4, Markle was already
a
person of interest in a Lufkin
Police investigation involving a phone call to a local
McDonald's. The Smoking Gun used information from
old MySpace and Facebook pages to confirm Markle’s identity. The
Website also had people from the area identify Markle in photos.
The Smoking Gun also published official documents showing that
Markle plead guilty to aggravated
sexual
assault of a child in 2005, serving two years in a juvenile
detention facility for
raping a
5-year-old girl at a church in Diboll and then threatening to kill
her if she told anyone about the incident.
In an interview with
The Lufkin Daily News, Markle denied
that the person described on TSG was him, claiming instead it was
another person called the Samoan Prankster.
Markle was arrested on September 8, 2009, for a June 20 call
targeting a McDonald's in Lufkin. Markle confessed to the crime
following his arrest, according to police.
He was charged with
felonies in two separate states: for making a felony terroristic
threat in the Lufkin McDonald's case and for terrorizing and
criminal damage (both felonies) in a separate incident involving a
Wendy's restaurant in Gretna, Louisiana
. The terrorizing felony in Louisiana carries
a maximum 15 years imprisonment. He was later extradited to
Louisiana as a result of the charges filed in the Gretna
incident.
Shawn Powell
Powell,
age 24 in 2009, was a Pranknet regular from Baytown,
Texas
who goes by the name Slipknotpsycho. In 2002
he was found guilty of indecency with a minor (for taking nude
photos of an 8-year-old female relative), a felony that put him in
custody for 13 months. In 2003 he was convicted of marijuana
possession. Powell specializes in racist and threatening calls. He
also organized a call to be placed to his own mother in which she
was told her name was found on a murder victim, possibly a
relative, and asked to come to the police station.
On August 26, 2009, Powell was charged with
criminal mischief for his part in a hoax
call to the Baytown Arby's restaurant, resulting in the fire
suppression system being activated and resulting in $1350 worth of
damage. The damage estimate barely missed the minimum required for
a felony ($1500). Although his accomplice in the misdemeanor,
Markle, lives in Texas, Powell claimed in the police report that
his accomplice lived in "western Canada".
LeeAnn Jordan
LeeAnn
Jordan, age 28, lives in Lewiston, Maine
with her children and goes by the online name
Veruca. Her
PayPal account has been
used by Malik to receive international money transfers. She also
paid for a
Paltalk account used by a
Canadian suspect in the KFC prank, which led to a police
interview.
Former members
Jericho Batsford
Jericho
Batsford, age 40, of Knoxville, Tennessee
was a Pranknet regular and frequent caller until
June, 2009. She left the group after the incident in
Conway,
Arkansas
(listed below) and contacted local FBI agents. She told them she knew Dex’s
identity to be that of Malik (a man in his 20s living with his
mother in Windsor, Ontario), and that he was responsible for many
incidents. In response to her defection, Pranknet members have
constantly harassed her home and her workplace via Skype. Malik
told members to be patient, that she would not answer the phone and
let them get to her, and to instead "get her later on down the
road, when she least expects it."
Batsford participated in some phone pranks under the name
"jericoNtn", but became disillusioned when she witnessed members
encouraging children under the age of 18 to make bomb
threats.
Identities revealed
Pranknet members were very careful to hide details about their
lives and locations. They bragged about their ability to remain
cloaked. In an interview with The Smoking Gun on June 17, 2009,
Malik exhibited no worries about ever being tracked down or caught.
In a July co-interview with Markle, he boasted: "It's too difficult
to find me. I'm a ghost on the Internet. I do pretty much
everything I can to keep anything out of my computer that would
lead it back to my actual computer. I'm not a stupid individual,
like I said."
In June 2009, The Smoking Gun launched an investigation that lasted
nearly two months and included travel to Windsor and a
stakeout outside Malik’s mother’s home. Finding the
exact location proved to be easy: Smoking Gun editor
William Bastone emailed the person who had
been referring to himself as "Dex" for an interview. Malik
eventually called Bastone via Skype. During their conversation,
Bastone provided Malik with
URLs of some Smoking Gun news
items. Unbeknownst to Malik, the URLs were unique: when he visited
the URLs, his
IP address was revealed.
With help from Windsor-area interviews, server logs and other
sources, Bastone and his staff were able to flesh out Malik’s
biography and pinpoint his exact location.
Along with publishing
this information on their website, The Smoking Gun also turned
their findings over to the FBI.
Other Pranknet incidents
In
February 2009, "Dex" called a KFC restaurant in Manchester,
New Hampshire
. Posing as a manager from the corporate
office, he persuaded employees to douse the building with
fire suppression chemicals and to
then proceed outside, remove all of their clothing and urinate on
each other (he claimed the chemicals were caustic and this would
render them inert). When "Dex" posted the audio to
YouTube he described it as "Epic KFC Prank Call
(greatest ever)...dex successfully convinces the 3 female employees
to undress fully nude OUTSIDE and URINATE ON EACH OTHER!!! AND
MORE!" Many months later "Dex", posing this time as an
insurance adjuster called the same KFC
and had the victims describe their experiences while Pranknet
members listened.
On
February 10, "Dex" and a member called "DTA_Mike", posing as hotel
front desk employees, called two separate guests at the Best Western in Shillington,
Pennsylvania
. Using the pretense of a ruptured
gas line, the caller persuaded each guest to break
a window and then throw the television out.
"Dex" and his friend
repeated the same stunt on February 19 with a Best Western in Santee, California
.
On April
30, a Pranknet member called "Rollin in the A" called Prejean's
Restaurant in Lafayette, Louisiana
posing as an official from the health
department. This target was selected because the restaurant
provided
live video streaming of its
dining area on their own website. The victim at this restaurant was
told that Prejean’s pork was tainted with the
swine flu. "Rollin in the A" also told the manager
to close the restaurant immediately and tell the customers (75 of
them) they may have eaten tainted food.
On May
27, "Dex" called a Hampton Inn in
York,
Nebraska
and tricked
an employee into setting off the fire
alarm. As guests made their way to the lobby, a second
call was placed to the front desk. "Dex" claimed that, to avoid
alleged fines, the
fire department
should not be called. Instead, the caller gave various bogus
instructions to turn the alarm off, including going to a website
that only displayed
pornography. The
next suggestion from the caller was to break the front windows of
the hotel. A truck driver staying at the hotel volunteered, and
under direction from "Dex", the man drove his
semi-trailer truck into the front door.
Later that night, "Dex"
tweeted: "I just
pulled off the most epic prank. I had a hotel guest back his truck
into the hotel front window (in the lobby), and break the window."
The post was deleted in late July.
In June,
a prank was made on a Holiday Inn
Express in Conway,
Arkansas. The caller posed as a representative from
the company that installed the hotel’s
fire sprinkler and claimed the system needed
to be reset by pulling the
fire alarm.
Once the alarm was turned on, the clerk was told that the
sprinklers would activate unless windows were broken.
In July,
a Pranknet member called a Hilton in
Orlando,
Florida
and, purporting there to be a gas leak, convinced a family staying there to break
windows with the lid for the toilet tank and throw their mattress
out the window. The incident cost $5,000 in damages.
Also in July, a Pranknet caller informed two hotel guests that
deadly spiders were about to infest their room. The caller was able
to manipulate the couple into breaking their window with the tank
lid from their toilet.
On July 5, Powell and Markle called an
Arby’s in Baytown (where Powell lives) and
talked a worker there into triggering the fire suppression system,
causing an estimated $4,600 in damages. Powell failed in his
attempts to get any windows broken. Powell was later arrested and
charged with criminal mischief for the incident.
On July
20, Markle tricked a desk clerk at the Homewood Suites in Lexington,
Kentucky
into drinking another person’s urine. The prank started with a call to a
guest. The guest was told it was the front desk calling and that a
prior guest had tested positive for
Hepatitis C. The guest was then told there was a
doctor on site and a simple
urine test
could determine if the guest was infected. The urine was to be
brought to the front desk in a simple drinking glass. Markle then
called the front desk alleging to be an employee of
Martinelli's Cider. He told the clerk that a
representative from the company would like to come downstairs with
a sample of their new drink. The guest from the previous call then
arrived and handed the clerk his urine. Markle then coaxed the
woman to try it. He asked how it tasted. "Horrible," she said.
"That does not taste like cider. I'm not going to take another sip,
that's horrible." Markle replied: "Well, I need to inform you of
something, ma'am. I want you to understand that you just drank that
man's urine." In its investigation, the Lufkin Police Department's
cyber crimes division has requested a
subpoena for Markle's Skype activities. The police
report classifies the Lexington incident as first-degree wanton
endangerment, a Class D
felony in Kentucky.
Additionally, an employee at a
Holiday Inn Express was persuaded by a
Pranknet caller to set off a fire alarm, break windows, and set off
sprinklers which flooded the building. Damages were estimated at
$50,000.
Phone and computer hijacking
Beginning in July 2009, Malik began hijacking
phone numbers of U.S. businesses and had them
forwarded to his Skype account. Claiming to be an authority from a
particular business, he calls a phone company and claims they have
no dial tone. He then requests that all calls be forwarded to the
number he provides.
On July 7
Malik took over incoming calls of the Olympic Game Farm in Port
Angeles, Washington
making obscene sexual comments to customers who
called. On July 11, he repeated the stunt with the
Fun 4 All amusement park in Chula Vista, California
. On July 13 he took over incoming calls to a
Best Western in Jacksonville, Florida
for over 12 hours. In one interaction, a
woman called to find out if her husband had arrived and was told
first that he had been in an accident, and then that he was having
sex with a man in his room and did not wish to be disturbed.
On July
15, Malik controlled incoming calls to a Hilton Garden Inn in Tulsa,
Oklahoma
. He
told people inquiring about a shuttle to take a cab and they’d be
reimbursed. He told some callers the hotel had a
swine flu outbreak and told other callers the
hotel was in the midst of a
hostage
situation.
Talking hotel front clerks through a series of steps using
TeamViewer, Malik has posed as a corporate
headquarters
IT supervisor
and taken remote control of hotel computers.
Craigslist pranks
Pranknet members frequently place
Craigslist ads offering free tickets or items.
Inquirers are bombarded with obscene sexual rants and racial
epithets. A 12-year old girl called about a free trampoline, and
Malik told her not to get pregnant by a black man because "they
have
AIDS". Markle frequently calls women who
are selling household items on Craigslist. After getting the
victim’s home address, he then tells her he is on his way over to
rape her and kill her children.
References
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