http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2009/0803091pranknet1.html
Outing An Online Outlaw
A TSG investigation unmasks the leader of Pranknet and the miscreants
behind a year-long wave of phone call criminality
AUGUST 4--At 4:15 AM on a recent Tuesday, on a quiet, darkened street in
Windsor, Ontario, a man was wrapping up another long day tormenting and
terrorizing strangers on the telephone. Working from a sparsely furnished
two-bedroom apartment in a ramshackle building a block from the Detroit
River, the man, nicknamed "Dex", heads a network of so-called
pranksters who have spent more than a year engaged in an orgy of criminal
activity--vandalism, threats, harassment, impersonation, hacking, and
other assorted felonies and misdemeanors--targeting U.S. businesses and
residents.
Coalescing in an online chat room, members of the group, known as
Pranknet, use the telephone to carry out cruel and outrageous hoaxes,
which they broadcast live around-the-clock on the Internet. Masquerading
as hotel employees, emergency service workers, and representatives of
fire alarm companies, "Dex" and his cohorts have successfully
prodded unwitting victims to destroy hotel rooms and lobbies, set off
sprinkler systems, activate fire alarms, and damage assorted fast food
restaurants.
But while Pranknet's hoaxes have caused millions of dollars in damages,
it is the group's efforts to degrade and frighten targets that makes it
even more odious. For example, a bizarre July 20 prank ended with a hotel
worker actually sipping from a urine sample provided by a guest at a
Homewood Suites in Kentucky. Additionally, at least twice this year, fast
food workers--fearing that they would suffer burns after being doused by
chemicals from a fire suppression system--stripped off their clothes on
the sidewalk outside their respective restaurants.
"Dex", who took his nickname from the lead character in
"Dexter," the Showtime series about a serial killer who murders
serial killers, is bitingly contemptuous of law enforcement and its
ability to stop Pranknet or locate its members. When a victim warns him
that they are contacting police, he laughs derisively and offers to
provide cops with a crayon to trace his number. He and his followers
place their prank calls via Skype, confident that the Internet phone
service sufficiently cloaks their identities and whereabouts.
By any measure, "Dex" is a sociopath, a mean-spirited sadist
who spews a barrage of racial epithets, vulgarities, and threats, and
clearly enjoys the panic, fear, and damage he causes. While his frauds
and sinister manipulations often rely on naive and compliant dupes,
"Dex" prefers to make it appear that he is practicing some
mysterious alchemy. "About to social engineer some people into doing
wild shit," he announced in a late-May Twitter post.
As the leader of what is essentially an online criminal organization,
"Dex" has been careful to cloak details about his life and
specific location, relying on a small circle of Pranknet confidants to
help underwrite the operation and conduct financial transactions on his
behalf.
But a seven-week investigation by The Smoking Gun has begun to unravel
"Dex"'s organization and chronicle the sprawl of its
criminality. The TSG probe has also stripped Pranknet's leader and some
of his cohorts of their anonymity, which will likely come as welcome news
to the numerous law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, probing the
group's activities.
On July 21, a pair of TSG reporters approached "Dex"'s building
at 1637 Assumption Street in Windsor, where he lives in the ground-floor
'B' apartment. Calling to his mother, who was standing near an open
living room window, a reporter asked her to summon her son. The woman
disappeared into "Dex"'s adjoining bedroom, where the pair
could be heard whispering. Despite repeated requests to come out and
speak with TSG, "Dex" hid with his mother in his bedroom, the
windows of which were covered with plastic shopping bags, a towel, and
one black trash bag.
As the sun set and his room darkened, "Dex" did not reach to
turn on a light. The notorious Internet Tough Guy, who has gleefully used
the telephone to cause all kinds of havoc, was now himself panicking. He
had been found. And, as a result, was barricaded in Pranknet World
Headquarters with his mom, while two reporters loitered outside his
window and curious neighbors wondered what was up.
That's when the online outlaw came up with a plan.
Tariq Malik, the 25-year-old founder and leader of Pranknet, decided to
call the police.
It was a move that would have chagrined his devoted followers, whose
"Dex" is a bombastic, sharp-tongued cop hater. On the mic, he
is always ready to pulverize victims, denigrating them as weak faggots,
pussies, cock gobblers, niggers, beaners, and every other racial slur
imaginable (though, notably, Malik does not take part in vicious chat
room abuse directed at "Pakis," the group's catch-all term for
Middle Eastern and Asian immigrants).
Cowering in his room with his mother, Malik called 911 to report
"suspicious persons" outside his home (it is unclear whether he
used Skype to beckon cops). According to Windsor Police Service records,
Malik asked not to be contacted by officers when they arrived at the
Assumption Street address. Despite that request, Fouzia Malik, 51,
eventually allowed a pair of Windsor patrolmen to enter the family's
$600-a-month apartment. The officers spent about 30 minutes conferring
with Tariq before emerging to report that he did not wish to speak with
reporters.
It will likely not be the last time law enforcement finds itself inside
Tariq Malik's bedroom.
* * *
Late on the evening of February 10, a call to Room 306 at the Best
Western in Shillington, Pennsylvania roused a sleeping traveler. Jonathan
Davis at the front desk was calling with scary news: A ruptured gas line
was threatening hotel guests, some of whom were already feeling
lightheaded and dizzy.
Noting that he was following a "protocol sheet," Davis
instructed the male guest that he needed to quickly unplug all electrical
devices and place wet towels at the base of the room's door to keep
carbon monoxide from entering the space. After the guest took those
precautions, Davis then directed him to bust out a 5' x 5' section of
window. The man, who happened to be a glazier, asked, "Are you
serious?" When Davis urgently assured him that the drastic measure
was required for his safety, the guest replied that he would put on
clothes and "bust this fucker."
Using a chair, the guest then smashed a window. As broken glass cascaded
into the room, Davis then advised that the television screen would need
to broken since the tube contained an electrical charge that could spark
an explosion. Davis suggested the use of the toilet tank cover to disable
the television. But when the guest threw the porcelain lid at the TV, it
broke. So Davis directed the man to toss the set out the window. Stepping
gingerly around glass shards, the guest complied.
At this point, Davis's supervisor, Jeff Anderson, joined the call
and determined that the guests in 306 had co-workers in the adjoining
room. Anderson then called Room 304 and advised the man answering the
phone to "remain calm." He told the guest of the gas leak and
advised him of the safety measures that had already been followed next
door. The man in 304 also unplugged electrical devices, placed wet towels
at the door, smashed a window, and tossed the television to the sidewalk
below. Anderson then directed the guest to pull the fire alarm. As a
siren wailed, the guest asked Anderson, "Can we get out of this
motel? Why can't we just leave the building?" He had previously
remarked, "I hope this ain't some kind of joke."
The call, of course, was the work of Pranknet. Malik played the role of
"Anderson," while "Davis" was portrayed by another
chat room regular who uses the nickname "DTA_Mike." While
capitalizing on their victims's disorientation and fear, Malik and his
sidekick spoke authoritatively and were politely insistent. Malik excels
at this sort of manipulation and reinforcement, which often includes the
introduction of a second person--usually a supposed manager or
supervisor--to underscore the urgency of a purported threat.
At the close of the Pennsylvania prank, Malik was pleased. "That's
some funny shit, dude," he remarked to online listeners.
The Best Western call was one of Malik's earliest successful efforts to
cause damage at a U.S. hotel. On February 19, he and a crony reprised the
gas leak prank at a Best Western in Santee, California (since Pranknet
members never have the name of an actual hotel guest, they just ask for a
random room number). Around midnight, they were connected to Room 208,
where a woman answered the phone. Hotel employee "Jonathan
Davis" apprised the guest of a dangerous gas leak, and relayed
safety instructions he was receiving from the "Department of Fire
and Safety."
Soon, with the help of a male cousin, the woman was breaking windows.
Without identifying himself, Malik joined the call and said, "You
guys creating that airflow is definitely helping the situation right
now." He then warned her that the TV "could potentially
explode" and needed to be smashed. When the male guest balked at
destroying the set, Malik urged her to "step up" and
"deactivate the transformer in the TV, ma'am." He also claimed
that hotel employees were "working on contingency plans to get you
out of that room."
As she grew more frantic, the crying woman pleaded, "Can I leave? I
want to get out of this room. Please."
When it appeared as if the guests had finally fled the room, Malik and
his coconspirator--who were joined via a balky Skype
connection--conferred about their next move with Pranknet listeners
commenting via a chat window. Malik sought audience input on whether he
should try to prank another room or call the front desk to complain about
"a crazy bitch in 208."
[A tape of the harrowing Santee call can be listened to in the column at
right.]
When San Diego County Sheriff's Department deputies responded to a 911
call from the Best Western, they questioned the Room 208 guests about the
trashed room. The man told cops what appeared to be a harebrained story
about how he caused the damage at the direction of a front desk employee,
according to a sheriff's spokesperson. In a bid to avoid arrest, the man,
a parolee, agreed to immediately pay cash to cover the damages.
While the Santee hoax was a Pranknet success--significant damage, bedlam,
and a crying woman, to boot--Malik was nonetheless a bit melancholy. Only
38 listeners were enjoying the prank as it unspooled over ten minutes.
Such a virtuosic performance deserved a massive audience, he must have
thought. It was as if Malik was singing at La Scala for just the
stagehands.
Malik's desire to grow his audience has dovetailed with the escalation of
Pranknet's criminal activities over the past year. He and his accomplices
have sought to perpetrate the kind of damaging pranks that listeners
would consider "epic," the chat room's highest compliment. A
prank caller also gets kudos when an antagonized victim yells or curses
back at them. Eliciting such "rage" is a Pranknet rite of
passage.
Malik appears to believe that Pranknet will someday achieve the
mainstream success of the Jerky Boys or Comedy Central's "Crank
Yankers." He remarked one evening that, "If we get it big
enough, it could get more than just fun." To date, his bid to expand
Pranknet's audience has met with limited success. During the weeks that
TSG monitored the chat room (for a total of about 150 hours), the largest
audience at any one time barely topped 200 listeners.
This modest growth, however, has come with significant challenges for
Malik. Many new listeners appear to have arrived at Pranknet after seeing
recent media accounts about individual damaging hoaxes (which have been
widely discussed on popular sites like Stickam.com and Fark.com, and the
4chan.org message board). This new crowd, Malik believes, includes law
enforcement officers, journalists, and other unwelcome
"trolls."
The increased scrutiny (and TSG's impending story) have left Malik
paranoid. So he has gone on a mole hunt, of sorts, capturing the Internet
Protocol (IP) addresses of visitors in a bid to somehow sniff out
interlopers (New York City residents are immediately suspect since TSG is
headquartered in Manhattan). In a post last week, the flustered Pranknet
chief notified chat room visitors that phone pranks were not to result in
damage, broken glass, etc. So it had come to this: Malik was being forced
to deny his own heritage.
Malik was more cocky and carefree when he agreed to a recent TSG
interview (back when he was still known to a reporter as only
"Dex"). Calling via his beloved Skype, Malik, of course,
expressed no remorse for his stunts. Prank targets, he declared, were
"responsible for their own actions." The victims he and his
cronies abused and degraded daily were simply "sheep" with
"no brains of their own."
One of Pranknet's goals, Malik said, was to prove how "stupid"
its targets were. When a reporter then facetiously asked if such an
unmasking of low-wage fast food and hotel workers was somehow a public
service, Malik gave a serious answer. "In a sense, yes," he
said.
The doughy Malik, by all indications, is a virtual shut-in. Neighbors
interviewed barely remembered ever seeing him. A woman who lives next
door recalled spotting him one time, after the building's fire alarm was
pulled and residents had to briefly evacuate their apartments. A former
landlord rented to Fouzia Malik for a year, but did not know Tariq lived
in his three-unit building until the night a fire destroyed the
property.
A story about that September 2008 blaze appeared in The Windsor Star,
which reported that Malik, without a shirt or shoes, fled when he saw
smoke billowing from the building. "But the online
businessman," the Star noted, "could not simply watch his home
burn without doing something." Malik told a reporter, "I ran
back inside and said, 'I've got to save something. So I grabbed my
laptop." Without that heroic action--screw the family photos and
heirlooms--Pranknet was saved from a fiery, if temporary, death. "We
need to find a place to live," Malik told the Star. "I feel
displaced, disoriented, borderline lost."
While TSG reporters watched his residence over two days last month,
Malik's mother Fouzia twice left to ride the bus to do grocery shopping.
Her son, though, never emerged from the apartment. Over the past several
years, the Maliks have bounced from a series of cheap Windsor flats, even
once spending time in a rooming house. Malik has told online
acquaintances that his father, a plumber, died about a decade ago, and
that money is frequently in short supply.
Offline friends--if they even exist--are minimal. He is part of that
young male subspecies that does not have a job or a girlfriend, passed on
college, and spends hours a day playing so-called first-person shooter
games like "Counter-Strike," "Halo," and
"Crossfire." Malik addresses everyone--including the Pranknet
audience itself--as "Dude." He steals his Wi-Fi. And he'd
certainly be living in his mother's basement if she had one.
While Malik can be engaging, quick-witted, and funny on the mic, he is
also a brute with a coarse worldview: most people are simps looking for a
handout and are deserving of abuse. The source of such misanthropy is
unknown, but it is seconded and abetted by Pranknet's malicious amen
chorus. In a June 17 interview, Malik blithely said he was not concerned
about calls being traced to him, reflecting the sort of misplaced
confidence shared by many of his online associates.
In addition to Malik, TSG's probe has identified an assortment of other
formerly invincible Pranknet regulars. This band of misfits
includes:
• Known online as "Hempster," William Marquis, 51, lives on
Gilroy Drive in the Scarborough section of Toronto, Ontario. Pranknet's
second-in-command, Marquis is a felon whose rap sheet includes
convictions for drunk driving (2004) and marijuana production (2005). The
latter case resulted in Marquis receiving a two-year "conditional
sentence," which roughly equates to probation.
Marquis was also busted in 1992 for his role in a $4 million hydroponic
pot growing operation. When he appeared in an Oshawa courtroom, "a
red-faced Marquis wept" during a bail hearing, according to the
Toronto Star. Charges in that case were later dropped after Marquis gave
prosecutors a statement about his role in the grow operation, a police
commander recalled. Marquis's codefendant, who headed the ring, later
pleaded guilty. In an interview last week, Marquis declined to discuss
the 1992 case, except to say that the $4 million figure quoted by law
enforcement was "grossly exaggerated."
Marquis is widely viewed as Pranknet's deputy and can regularly be seen
enforcing chat room rules and banishing, or "bouncing"
violators. Pranknet's "room mother," Marquis has told online
acquaintances that he has provided Malik with rent money, and last year
he apprised a small circle of Pranknet intimates about the fire at
Malik's home (in an apparent attempt to solicit donations to the Pranknet
chief).
Earlier this year Marquis offered a $500 bounty to anyone in the chat
room who could succeed in getting someone to drive a car through the
lobby window of a hotel. Remarkably, Malik did just that on May 27 at a
Hampton Inn in York, Nebraska. Posing as a representative from a fire
alarm company, Malik tricked a front desk worker into pulling the hotel
alarm, which he claimed was malfunctioning and needed to be
"reset." After the alarm sounded, he told the woman that the
only way to stop the screeching was to break lobby windows, which
supposedly contained sensors of some sort. As York Police Department
Chief Donald Klug recalled, "A trucker was standing there and he
offered to help and drove his truck through the front
door."
Malik was so pleased with the destruction that he raced to Pranknet's
Twitter page to contemporaneously report, "I just pulled off the
most epic prank. I had a hotel guest back his truck into the hotel window
(in the lobby) and break the window." That tweet/admission of guilt
was recently deleted from the group's Twitter feed.
Marquis's most recent pranks involved follow-up calls placed in an effort
to get victims to recount the damage caused by previous Pranknet hoaxes.
He posed as an insurance adjuster in a call to a Waffle House where
employees had been persuaded to set off the restaurant's fire suppression
system. Following a notorious February 26 prank at a KFC in Manchester,
New Hampshire, Marquis called the restaurant and said he was an
"investigator" in a bid to get victims to recount how they were
humiliated.
The KFC prank, an excerpt of which can be listened to in the column at
right, was handled by Malik and another Pranknet regular nicknamed
"Slayer." That call was recently removed from Pranknet's
YouTube page, which itself was suspended last week by the online video
giant. Here's how Malik described the February call when he posted it to
YouTube: "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!"
Sometimes, when Malik opts not to abuse a young female victim who has
ended up on the phone with him (they are usually answering fake
Craigslist ads offering something of value for free, like a laptop or
concert tickets), he tries to impress her by noting, "We've made the
news many times. Not for anything good." Operating without a
wingman, Malik then tries to close the deal by suggesting the woman
Google the phrase "KFC employees naked" so that she can get a
fuller understanding of his prowess. This is apparently how Malik tries
to court a gal.
During an interview, Marquis, who told TSG that his "conscience is
clear," lied about his criminal record and the extent of his
involvement with Pranknet. Asked about his relationship with Malik,
Marquis said, "There is no relationship," adding that he had no
contact with the Pranknet founder. He also denied giving Malik money or
paying for Pranknet expenses like Skype accounts.
However, Marquis's claim that he is not in contact with Malik is belied
by TSG's own computer server logs. Records indicate that Malik
immediately shared with Marquis the addresses of stories about Pranknet
that appeared on TSG. The stories, which each carried a distinctive url
that was created solely for Malik's viewing, were first provided to the
Pranknet founder in e-mails sent to his Gmail account
(axi..._at_gmail.com). On three occasions over the last six weeks, within
minutes of Malik clicking a link (which recorded his IP address in
Windsor), Marquis also looked at the story, resulting in his Scarborough
IP being memorialized on TSG's servers.
When confronted with this strange coincidence, Marquis could offer little
beyond, "Hmmmm."
• Shawn Powell, known as "Slipknotpsycho," is a 24-year-old
Texan on that state's sex offender registry. In May 2002, he was
sentenced to 13 months in custody following his conviction on a felony
charge of indecency with a minor (he admitted taking naked photos of an
eight-year-old female relative). The unemployed Powell, whose rap sheet
also includes a 2003 pot possession conviction, is a relative Pranknet
newcomer and, as a result, apparently only the subject of one police
investigation.
On July 5, TSG has learned, Powell and a Pranknet veteran nicknamed
"Prankster" targeted a pair of fast food restaurants. Of all
the cities he could have chosen, Powell decided to cut his teeth in
Baytown, Texas, where he happens to reside. While "Prankster"
took the lead, posing as "Jamie Taylor," a representative of
the Baytown Fire Department, Powell "hosted" the calls via his
Skype account.
"Prankster" succeeded in convincing an Arby's worker to
activate the kitchen's fire suppression system, which resulted in foam
being discharged from overhead extinguishers. Powell, using the alias
"Corey Taylor" (the name of the lead singer in the metal band
Slipknot), joined the call in an unsuccessful attempt to get the worker
to break windows due to the purported toxic nature of the foam. According
to a Baytown Police Department report, an Arby's manager estimated that
the prank caused $4600 in damages and lost sales, and said that the
restaurant would be shut until the local health department inspected the
business and cleared it to reopen. A similar call by Powell and
"Prankster" to a Baytown Jack in the Box did not fool employees
there.
As is Pranknet custom, "Prankster" placed a July 6 follow-up
call to try and gauge the damage he and Powell caused the previous day.
Referring to the Arby's fire system by its correct trade name--Axiom--he
told a manager that if she set it off again, "it would clean all the
foam off the floor."
Powell's brief Pranknet career also includes a barrage of racist and
threatening calls. And one afternoon last month, he even arranged for a
prank call to be made to his own mother, which was broadcast live. With a
Pranknet member acting as if he were a cop, Powell's mother was made to
believe that her name and phone number were found in the pocket of a
murder victim. The woman, who said she thought the dead man could be a
relative, was directed to come to the police station for further
information.
• Nothing speaks more to the execrable nature of Malik's rank and file
than the fact that the sex offender who took naked photos of a little
girl is not the most loathsome guy in the chat room.
A leading contender for that honor is "Prankster" himself. Over
the past year, he has perpetrated dozens of hoaxes across the country,
making him one of Pranknet's most prolific vandals. While
"Prankster" has left destroyed hotel rooms, damaged
restaurants, and scores of victims in his wake, his most reprehensible
act occurred on July 20.
The prank began that morning with a call to the front desk of a Homewood
Suites hotel in Lexington, Kentucky. "Prankster" asked to be
connected to Room 206, and when a male guest answered the phone, he
claimed to be calling from the front desk with alarming news. The prior
guest in Room 206, he claimed, had tested positive for hepatitis C and
the hotel was concerned that the infectious disease could have been
transmitted to the man due to an insufficient cleaning of the room by
housekeeping staff.
The guest was informed that the hotel had a doctor on premises and, just
to be safe, he was asked to provide a urine sample to be tested. While
the request was preposterous on its face, the man nonetheless complied.
After urinating in a bathroom drinking glass, he was directed to drop the
sample off at the front desk for testing. While this action alone might
have earned the coveted Pranknet "epic" tag, the hoax was not
over.
Switching characters, "Prankster" then called the front desk
and claimed to be a representative with Martinelli's, a cider company. He
told a female Homewood Suites employee that a representative of his firm
was coming downstairs with a sample of a new apple cider and asked
whether she would sample it and give her opinion of the product. "It
has like a fizzy sensation," he advised the woman. "It's
supposed to tingle as it goes down."
[A recording of the conclusion of the July 20 prank can be listened to in
the column at right.]
Then, like clockwork, the male guest arrived at the hotel's front desk as
the female employee was on the phone with "Prankster."
"Here he comes," the woman announced as the man approached her
desk. "Okay, take the cider and send him back up to his room,"
"Prankster" advised. Amazingly, the male guest turned over the
urine sample without any discussion with the hotel clerk.
Laughing, the woman asked, "You're sure there's no poison in
this?" "Prankster" responded, "I'm sure ma'am."
After the woman sipped from the glass, "Prankster" asked how it
tasted. "Horrible," she replied. "That does not taste like
cider...I'm not gonna take another sip, that's horrible." She added,
"I can't take any more of that."
It was now time for the repulsive reveal.
"Well, I need to inform you of something, ma'am," said
"Prankster." "I want you to understand that you just drank
that man's urine." This pronouncement was accompanied with a burst
of laughter from another Pranknet member apparently sitting in on the
Skype call. The second man called the hotel employee a "dumb
bitch" for drinking the guest's bacteria-filled waste. The
disgusting episode, of course, received plaudits from the Pranknet chat
room faithful, one of whom exclaimed, "That bitch drank piss!"
Another regular, who uses the nickname "Timmy two-bags," typed
this trenchant observation: "i bet she was gagging for a few hours
after that."
Homewood Suites employees, who would not speak to TSG, immediately
reported the incident to the Lexington Division of Police. A
spokesperson, Detective Shannon Garner, confirmed that the matter is
being investigated as wanton endangerment, a first-degree felony. Garner
said a police report gave this brief synopsis of the crime: "Victim
was intentionally exposed to an unknown substance by an unknown person
without her knowledge."
Hours after the incident, Pranknet's eminence grise decided to weigh in.
Marquis, a 51-year-old with nothing better to do than hang out with
degenerates half his age, sought to downplay the "Prankster"
achievement. "Prankster's fucking head is gonna get all swollen. He
just got lucky with the right person, for fuck's sake," harrumphed
"Hempster."
While conning a victim into drinking someone else's urine is acceptable
conduct, Marquis draws the line at pranks involving animals. Because he
is a committed cat person, you see. It would be downright diabolical to
even refer to a pet in a Pranknet hoax. During an off-topic discussion
last week, Marquis referred to news that day of the discovery of the
remains of an eight-year-old girl who had gone missing months earlier.
The creepy Pranknet leader, who enjoys monitoring police scanners, noted
that while the child's murder was a "shame," he would "be
more pissed off if it was an animal. If it was somebody's pet that they
kidnapped, beat, and tortured and killed. Isn't that weird?"
Last Friday, TSG obtained the Skype number (281-761-6233) used by
"Prankster" and gave it a call. Though a reporter was dialing
from a blocked number, "Prankster" picked up anyway, which he
said he rarely does.
Asked whether he was concerned about the police probe of the felonious
urine prank (not to mention other investigations into his activities),
"Prankster" said, "Not necessarily." He had little
concern about being located or identified by police, journalists, or
victims: "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." An audio excerpt of TSG's interview with
"Prankster" can be found in the column at right.
[As he was speaking, "Prankster" was desperately trying to get
on the Pranknet mic so that he could broadcast something epic: His TSG
interview. Alas, he never got the mic, nor did "Prankster"
fathom that his interviewer was monitoring the chat room as he tried to
set up a live sandbagging.]
When pushed to answer more questions, "Prankster" brayed that
he no longer wanted to be bothered by a reporter.
"You, of all people, is telling someone to leave them alone? Don't
you exist to do the exact opposite?" he was asked.
"Yeah, but that's my job," he replied. Did he actually
considered tormenting strangers on the telephone his occupation?
"Prankster" answered, "In a way, yes. But in a way, no.
It's a hobby, hobby slash job slash, you know, something of that
nature." During the 10-minute conversation, "Prankster"
declared that he was "not a snitch and I'm not a phony,"
adding, "If you do happen to come across my address, my phone
number, my real name, then you can go ahead and you can do
that."
So, with the young criminal's permission, TSG spent the next 24 hours
trying to identify him. When we called him back early Saturday
evening--this time on his home number--his mother answered the line. When
"Prankster" came to the phone, he was no longer willing to chat
about his "hobby slash job" or his status as Internet
apparition. Instead, he quickly hung up when a reporter identified
himself. He would do this again when we called back.
"Prankster" is Tyler Markle, who turns 19 later this
month.
He lives with his mother and stepfather in a mobile home on a rural road
in Diboll, Texas (pop. 5407), about 115 miles north of Houston. He is a
2008 graduate of Diboll High School and, like Pranknet founder Malik, is
an avid player of first-person shooter games (he is known in that world
as "RancidOneShot 2" and "N3v3rQu1t").
On a recently deleted MySpace page, Markle (whose full name is James
Tyler Markle) listed his body type as "6' 6" / Athletic,"
though that is an exaggeration, according to one source. He plays on a
recreational softball team, dresses like a goth, and loves the
"Twilight" series of books (his Twitter account,
"3DW4RD_B3LL4," is an alphanumeric tribute to the vampire
saga's main characters). Markle also happens to be a regular at the
area's only gay bar, though he is not old enough to drink and lists his
orientation as "Straight" on his former MySpace page. Fellow
patrons would likely be interested to learn of his frequent homophobic
rants while on the Pranknet mic, not to mention his repeated threats to
violate men and women with a chair leg.
As the sun set Saturday evening, Markle retreated to his bedroom while
his mom screened calls from New York City.
• Known as "Veruca," LeeAnn Jordan is a 28-year-old Lewiston,
Maine woman who has allowed her PayPal account to be used by Malik to
receive assorted money transfers, including payments for CDs and MP3s
containing hundreds of his pranks. Malik, records show, also had access
last year to a server housing two web sites connected to Jordan,
including one for her father's electrical contracting business.
While Jordan does not place prank calls--and rarely shows up in the
Pranknet chat room--her name surfaced in the criminal investigation of
the hoax at the Manchester KFC. In February, Malik and his allies were
carrying out their pranks in a room on the popular Paltalk chat service.
When investigators discovered that Jordan had paid for the Paltalk
account used by one of the KFC suspects, they conducted an interview with
her.
Jordan, a mother of small children, told a detective that she
"pretty much lives her life through the computer" and
acknowledged purchasing the Paltalk account in question, which carried
the nickname "DonkeyPuncher" (one of several accounts used by
Malik). Asked about the identity of "DonkeyPuncher," Jordan
said she "doesn't know him," and claimed that it was "not
uncommon for her to buy people temporary memberships to Paltalk,"
according to a Manchester Police Department report.
The Manchester probe stalled when Detective Peter Marr traced the
"DonkeyPuncher" IP address to an Internet service provider in
Canada. With the case now moving outside the country, Marr contacted
federal prosecutors for guidance. However, as Marr wrote in a May 6
report, "It was obvious to me that the US Attorney's didn't have
much interest in the case when I told them that the IP address of the
suspect" was in Canada. In shutting the case, Marr noted, "At
this time I have exhausted all leads and am closing the case due to not
having the jurisdiction to continue further."
In a brief interview, Jordan denied ever speaking with Manchester police,
and refused to answer questions about Malik, whom she claimed lived 3500
miles away from her.
It is certainly not a coincidence that all the damaging Pranknet calls
have been directed at American businesses and residents. Malik has
recently provided some Pranknet denizens with lengthy target lists
including the locations and phone numbers of hundreds of Best Western and
Hilton Garden Inn hotels, all of which are in the U.S. (excerpts from
those compilations, found on the Pranknet.org web site, can be seen
here). Pranknet's boss and underboss are Canadian citizens, and
apparently of the opinion that they are beyond the reach of U.S. law
enforcement officials.
After Malik & Co. broadcast the KFC prank over Paltalk earlier
this year, the chat company banned the group from its service. But
Pranknet quickly regrouped and established a similar room via Beyluxe, a
rival chat service. Beyluxe, which is headquartered overseas, is either
unaware or unconcerned about the rampant criminality taking place on
Pranknet.
Malik's banishment from Paltalk was in the works prior to the KFC hoax.
He had repeatedly launched illegal denial of service (DoS) attacks on
Paltalk servers housing competing chat rooms. The sophisticated assaults
increased after Malik was banned from Paltalk, according to Perry
Scherer, the company's chief technology officer. "He's a
reprehensible, horrible creature with no morals," said Scherer, who
added that his company spent significant sums to counter Malik's attacks
and protect against future incursions. In a TSG interview, Jeri Batsford,
a Tennessee woman who was, until recently, a Pranknet regular,
acknowledged her involvement in the Paltalk attacks. She admitted paying
for Malik's use of a Voxel server from which he launched the DoS
blitz.
Batsford, who was a gleeful participant in a number of acts of
hotel vandalism, left the group after a falling out with Malik and
others. When it was reported that she had contacted law enforcement about
Pranknet activities, Batsford became the chat room's biggest target (she
defected around the time a fire alarm/sprinkler prank caused $50,000 in
damage at a Holiday Inn Express in Conway, Arkansas). As a result, she
has endured weeks of unending harassment at her home and the gourmet food
market where she works. Last week, a chat room regular--an adult male
nicknamed "Moe Lester"--urged fellow Pranknet habitues to call
Tennessee's Child Protective Services division and lodge fabricated
claims about Batsford beating her teenage son. "Moe Lester" is
a Nantucket resident whose business would likely suffer if his real name
was attached to his racist Pranknet musings (not to mention his advocacy
of filing false child abuse reports).
For his part, Malik last Friday suggested taking the long view when it
came to "trying to fuck with" Batsford. "She isn't going
to answer the phone. She isn't goign to let you get to her," he
wrote. Instead, the Pranknet boss suggested that they would "have to
get her later on down the road, when she least expects it." In some
quarters, that might be construed as a threat against the 40-year-old
Batsford.
In the wake of Batsford's approach to law enforcement, Pranknet lost one
of its most promising vandals. Known as "Rollin in the A," the
20-year-old Atlanta-area man said that he "freaked out" when a
TSG reporter contacted him at his home. He responded by immediately
deleting the Beyluxe chat program from his computer. "I regret that
I got involved with it," he said. "I regret the damages. It was
a stupid, bad decision."
He said that he first listened to some Pranknet calls on YouTube and
recalled thinking, "Damn, I can't believe this shit." Soon, he
was making prank calls to hotel guests, one of which resulted in a call
referred to as "Demolition Man" in Pranknet circles (that tape
can be listened to in the column at right). In an April 30 call to
Prejean's, a Lafayette, Louisiana restaurant, "Rollin" posed as
a Health Department official and warned the eatery that it had received a
shipment of pork tainted with a strain of swine flu. He directed the
eatery to close immediately, and told a manager to inform 75 diners of
the possibility that they had consumed contaminated food.
"Rollin" told TSG that Malik picked Prejean's as a target
because the Cajun restaurant's web site offered a live video stream of
its dining room. So Pranknet visitors were able to watch the business
clear out in real time. A video of the Prejean's prank can be viewed in
the column at right.
Asked about his opinion of Malik, who he knew only as "Dex,"
"Rollin" said that the Pranknet founder was "very serious
about wanting to build the room up. That's the reason he did the
sprinkler calls, to get new listeners." He added that Malik
"feels very comfortable with himself" and wants Pranknet hoaxes
"to be epic."
* * *
In recent weeks, Malik has added a new criminal wrinkle to the Pranknet
repertoire. On at least six occasions, he has successfully hijacked the
phone number of a U.S. business and had it forwarded to one of the Skype
numbers he controlled.
In each instance, an unknown male caller had contacted a phone company
and pretended to be a representative of the targeted business. The caller
claimed that there was no dial tone on the firm's phone, and requested
that all calls be immediately forwarded to a number that he provided.
When that occurred, Malik could barely contain his excitement: "OMG
EPIC. WE NOW OWN A FUCKING KIDS WONDELAND. BWHAHAHAHAHA.. THEY WON'T BE
ABLE TO TURN IT OFF EITHER, NOT EASILY." On other occasions, he
announced that he had "taken over a ZOO," and "I AM NOW A
HAIR CUTTING SALON."
On July 13, while calls to a Best Western in Jacksonville, Florida
were being rerouted to him, Malik spoke with an elderly woman who was
trying to confirm that a male acquaintance had arrived safely at the
hotel. After first telling the woman that the man had been in an
accident, he then claimed that the guest was in his room with another man
and did not want to be disturbed. While the old woman's dismay was
evident, one Pranknet commenter thought it was comedy gold: "This
bitch is gonna have a heart attack." Malik controlled the 60-room
hotel's phone for almost 13 hours, according to a Best Western
manager.
The Olympic Game Farm in Port Angeles, Washington had its phone hijacked
by Malik on July 7. When callers dialed to ask questions about what time
the business closed, Malik made crude sexual remarks to them. The phone
at the Fun 4 All amusement park in Chula Vista, California was similarly
compromised on July 11, with calls being forwarded to a Skype number with
a 202 area code. "We are totally ransacking, taking over all these
businesses," a pleased Malik commented at one point.
For about four hours on July 15, Malik was in control of the incoming
phone calls to a Hilton Garden Inn in Tulsa, Oklahoma. When travelers who
had arrived at the airport called about the availability of the hotel
shuttle, Malik told them that it was not operating and that they would be
reimbursed for taking a cab to the hotel. Other callers were told that
there had been a swine flu outbreak at the hotel or that there was a
hostage situation underway.
After consulting with AT&T, hotel manager Terri Kullerd learned that
the Hilton's calls had been illegally forwarded to (541) 207-1337,
another Skype number. When TSG called the number, a man answered and
quickly hung up when a reporter identified himself. Almost immediately in
the Pranknet chat room, a regular nicknamed "paranormal" was
wondering how a TSG reporter had obtained his Skype number.
Kullerd said she spoke to Tulsa cops and the local FBI office right after
last month's phone hijacking.
On numerous occasions, Malik has also succeeded in remotely taking
control of a hotel's computer by posing as an IT supervisor at corporate
headquarters. By directing front desk employees to the web site for
TeamViewer, a free program that allows a user to "take control over
a computer anywhere on the Internet," he has walked them through a
series of steps that end with him in control of, or mirroring, the hotel
computer.
As companies become more aware of Pranknet's m.o. (a Florida sheriff's
alert can be seen here, while an internal Choice Hotels e-mail is here),
Malik and his followers have recently been left to spend most of their
time fielding calls prompted by fraudulent Craigslist ads offering free
goods. Callers are routinely subjected to a torrent of racial slurs and
sexual comments. One evening, when a 12-year-old girl called about a
purported free trampoline, Malik offered the child some advice: Do not
get pregnant by a black man, he said. "They have AIDS."
One Pranknet mainstay, who would likely love to see his nickname in
print, fashions himself as doing a daily prank "show," like a
radio DJ. The wheezing adult male, who sounds like he has a working
familiarity with various stimulants, specializes in calling up female
Craigslist advertisers offering baby clothes, toys, or Winnie the Pooh
swings. After sweetly extracting the home address where he can come and
purchase the items, the man then announces that he's headed over to rape
the woman and kill her children.
Early Saturday evening, the Pranknet crew came up with a new variation on
the fake classified stunt. An ad was placed on Craigslist's Denver site
offering a free 32-inch flat-screen TV. Those interested were directed to
immediately call 541-207-1337 (which happened to be the same Skype number
used in the July 15 hijacking of the Tulsa Hilton's phones).
As a steady stream of callers reached Malik, he directed them to a home
on Warren Drive, where they could pick up the TV. At the same time,
Pranknet members were calling local plumbers and having them dispatched
to the same address for a service call. The address was selected because
it was directly across the street from the home of Timothy Tomlin, a
26-year-old Pranket member known as "Timmy two-bags." To the
delight of chat room participants, Tomlin, who lives at 6981 Warren
Drive, pointed a web cam at the neighbor's house and provided a live feed
of the unfolding chaos.
For those unable to watch the cam, Tomlin provided a running commentary
on the number of cars massing in front of his neighbor's home, along with
descriptions of prospective TV recipients: "I see the lady....shes
old and limping." Tomlin's wife, from whom he is separated, said
Sunday that she passed two TSG messages onto him, but the Denver man
never called back a reporter.
Compared to Pranknet's previous body of work--flooded businesses,
destroyed hotel rooms, damaged restaurants with naked employees on the
sidewalk, and broken glass everywhere--this was pretty tame stuff. Still,
the image of grown man hiding in the dark tormenting a neighbor for the
enjoyment of other guys sitting alone in front of their computers on a
Saturday night crisply illustrates the totality of the Pranknet
experience.
* * *
Tariq Malik once told a friend that his first computer was a 486 DX with
multimedia capability. He had lobbied his parents hard to shell out for
the used model, which he apparently used to launch Pranknet about a
decade ago.
At the time, he was a skinny high school student whose face was
dominated by a pair of unruly eyebrows. He viewed his new project as an
"online radio station." Known as "Skream9" and
"New Age Pimp," Malik wanted to broadcast "anything that
makes the public laugh...It's all about the audience." His small
group of listeners included fellow teens with online nicknames like
"AssJesus," "rage16," and Evil-Rome0." To
facilitate ideas, one day he added a "Prank someone form" to
his page. "CLICK HERE AND FILL IN INFO ABOUT THE VICTIM," he
helpfully instructed visitors. The teenager desperately wanted to build
an online community which he would head. "He likes being the
leader," recalled a friend from that period.
Over the years, Pranknet would hit fallow patches, usually when Malik had
more important things to do. He started an online business, NRG Servers,
that rented server space to the hardcore gaming crowd. Malik's business
was successful enough, he told a friend, that he was able to get a Dodge
and move out of his mother's Windsor apartment. He didn't travel far,
though. Malik remained in the worn Riverside community across from
Detroit's Renaissance Center and over which a yeasty smell lingers thanks
to a nearby Hiram Walker plant.
But when Malik's game server business failed, he reluctantly had to move
back in with his mother. He told an online friend that he first made sure
there was an unprotected Wi-Fi network that he could access from his
parent's flat (though he really had no other place to go). In short
order--with no job and time on his hands--Malik once again set out to
grow that online audience he has always chased. His target demographic
was bored young men (and a few stray women) who enjoyed the humiliation
racket.
As his pranks have escalated into an assortment of criminal behavior, a
listener could be forgiven for concluding that all the destruction and
breaking glass was Malik's way of keeping himself interested in the
endeavor. At times on the mic he sounds bored and distracted, usually
while insulting or threatening an umpteenth Craigslist caller (he
recently demanded that one man begin taking Seroquel, an antipsychotic
with which he seemed familiar).
Last month, after NBC's "Today" show aired a report about a
prank at an Orlando hotel--which did not mention Pranknet's
involvement--Malik whined on the mic that, "Apparently I'm to blame
for everything. It's really annoying." And in a July 13 Twitter post
he complained about how "the news distorts and lies about
shit."
Having succumbed to baser urges, Malik, sequestered in his 10' x 12'
Canadian bedroom, is now stuck dealing with the messy
consequences.
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James M.
Atkinson &=
nbsp; &nbs=
p;
Phone: (978) 546-3803
Granite Island
Group &nbs=
p;
Fax: (978) 546-9467
127 Eastern Avenue
#291 =
;
Web:
http://www.tscm.com/
Gloucester, MA
01931-8008 =
;
E-mail:
mailto:jm..._at_tscm.com<=
br>
http://www.linkedin.com/in/jamesmatkinson
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No enterprise is more likely to succeed than one concealed from the
enemy until it is ripe for execution. - Machiavelli, The Prince,
1521
Received on Sat Mar 02 2024 - 00:57:26 CST