The Most Hated Man on the Internet must have rubbed Judge Dolly Gee the right way to get better release conditions than less serious offenders. Revenge porn dude Hunter Moore was also treated more favorably during the pre-trial phase and seemingly every other phase except when it came to the length of his sentence. I know because I am one of those less serious offenders.
In 2015, controlling precedent in the Ninth Circuit allowed for total bans on computer use without prior approval from probation. I received such a ban in 2013 for sending a single death threat the previous year to a deranged stalker that hounded me for months just because I wouldn't remove something her ex posted from a site of mine. What I wouldn't remove had nothing to do with porn, didn't even include a picture. I was convicted in federal court for making threatening communication in violation of 18 U.S.C. 875 (c). My release conditions included the following:
"The defendant is prohibited from using or possessing any computer(s) and/or directing third parties to do so on his behalf (including any handheld computing device, any electronic device capable of connecting to any on-line service, or any data storage media) without the prior written approval of the U.S. Probation Officer. This includes, but is not limited to, computers at public libraries, Internet cafes, or the defendant's place of employment or education."
Controlling precedent at the time didn't consider this condition to be a total ban on computer use. I appealed to the Ninth Circuit, but because of my appellate waiver they could only review for plain error. The court held that my ban was not a ban "because the conditions are not absolute, but permit access subsequent to approval by Probation." See United States vs. Sullivan (https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca9/13-30207/13-30207-2014-12-16.html). My appeal was denied in 2014, so I was surprised to learn that Hunter Moore received far more favorable conditions in 2015 despite doing far worse. Moore worked with a hacker named Charles Evens to acquire naked pictures of over 40 women which Moore posted on his website. Moore knew the pictures were hacked the entire time. I feel that Moore's conduct was more serious than mine, so if anybody should have been banned from computers it should have been Moore. Moore received extremely favorable conditions of supervised release by comparison.
The most favorable condition Moore received was the ability to use any computer as long as he told his probation officer before using it. That condition read:
"The defendant shall possess and use only those computers and computer-related devices, screen user names, passwords, e-mail accounts, and Internet service providers (ISPs) that have been disclosed to the Probation Officer upon commencement of supervision. Any changes or additions are to be disclosed to the Probation Officer prior to the first use. Computers and computer-related devices include personal computers, personal data assistants (PDAs), Internet appliances, electronic games, cellular telephones, and digital storage media, as well as their peripheral equipment, that can access, or be modified to access, the Internet, electronic bulletin boards, and other computers;"
Moore was also ordered to consent to a search of any computer he used, but was granted immunity from search at work. That condition read:
"All computers, computer-related devices and their peripheral equipment used by defendant shall be subject to search and seizure. This shall not apply to items used at the employment site, which are maintained and monitored by the employer; "
Those conditions would have allowed Moore to look for a job online, own a smart phone and work a computer access job. I was denied all three when I was sent to the Northwest Regional Re-Entry Center (NWRRC) to complete the last six months of my sentence. Those conditions literally drove me mad and led to a consecutive 24 month sentence for assaulting a federal employee. I spent nearly 4 months pacing the halls every weekday while the TVs were turned off and everyone else was either at work, in the computer room looking for work, or playing with their phones. The staff could tell I as losing it. They sent a psychologist to talk to me multiple times, but there was nothing he could do because my state of mind was the product of my environment. Had my probation officer at the time, Rene Worthey (https://copblaster.com/blast/29/the-ice-queen-former-u-s-probation-officer-rene-worthey), simply given me permission to use monitored computers to seek jobs that were not limited to non-computer access jobs, I would not have gone back to prison because I would have been busy sitting in the computer room looking for work all day.
Technically, my P.O. did let me use a computer in the computer room for about an hour one day. Then I was kicked out of the room for being overheard making a disparaging comment about the so called "victim" from my case. I wasn't accused of abusing the computer, but using "abusive language" while sitting at one. That was enough for her to tell the head of the employment department not to let me use computers anymore. Eventually, they tried to blackmail me into signing a ridiculous contract by threatening to send me back to prison if I didn't sign it. The contract (see last 2 pages at https://copblaster.com/uploads/files/whitney-struse.pdf), said among other things, "You may only have access to the computer between 12:30 PM and 3:30PM, M-F" and "you will be given one hour to complete your job search." Nobody can be reasonably expected to find work if they're only allowed to look for work 5 hours a week. The contract also read, "You may go to the following two websites: Simply Hired and Craigslist. If a website attempts to
navigate you to a third party website you MUST talk to Resource Staff before going to it." I wouldn't legitimize such an outrageous contract with my signature, so I slapped the head of the employment department in the face. There were no punches as alleged in the police report. Video footage clearly showed a single slap to the face. For that I received a hero's welcome back at jail from other guys who'd been sent back by the same person.
In 2016, the Ninth Circuit changed the law by declaring that a proviso permitting computer access as approved by probation does not cure what otherwise is a total ban on computer use. Now I can say that I was the real victim in that case because the assault was a direct response to a government employee voluntarily subjecting me to an unconstitutional deprivation of liberty. Most convicts agreed the Tree of Liberty was refreshed that day. If I could do it over again I wouldn't of course. In United States v. LaCoste (https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-9th-circuit/1734557.html), the court held:
"The government seeks to defend the condition as drafted by arguing that it is not really a total ban, since it allows LaCoste to use the Internet so long as he first obtains his probation officer's approval. That proviso does not save what is otherwise a plainly overbroad restriction on LaCoste's liberty. When a total ban on Internet access cannot be justified, as is the case here, we have held that a proviso for probation-officer approval does not cure the problem. See Sales, 476 F.3d at 737. And for good reason: If a total ban on Internet use is improper but a more narrowly tailored restriction would be justified, the solution is to have the district court itself fashion the terms of that narrower restriction. Imposing a total ban and transferring open-ended discretion to the probation officer to authorize needed exceptions is not a permissible alternative. See United States v. Scott, 316 F.3d 733, 736 (7th Cir.2003)."
Since a total ban could not be justified in my case, my conditions were modified to permit monitored access. My second probation officer, Matthew Preuitt (https://copblaster.com/blast/64/matthew-preuitt-seems-nice-but-so-would-some-more-fact-checking), forced me to use software which slowed every computer I installed in on to a halt. His refusal to try different software applications developed by different companies and used by law enforcement for the same purposes was unreasonable.
Monitoring was used to create an effective ban on computer use by making any computer I used unusable. My lawyer didn't want to file an objection with the court citing a conflict of interest between my desire to challenge the condition's enforcement methods and his desire to serve his other clients. He basically gave me the impression that because I was not in custody that he wanted to prioritize serving people in custody over me, so I needed to work it out with probation and the monitoring company. He later withdrew. He was the third lawyer to withdraw from my case against my wishes. He is a good lawyer but good lawyers need time. Future counsel advised that if they withdrew, the court was not likely to appoint me others. Turns out a person can be held as having effectively waived their right to counsel if they push their counsel too much. This means that if the court appoints too many lawyers that quit you're not entitled to one anymore.
My response was to fight my own way by disabling the monitoring software (https://copblaster.com/blast/48/how-to-disable-internet-probation-and-parole-control-software) and creating a website called Cop Blaster which at launch featured articles containing disparaging truths about everyone involved in prosecuting me as well as their home addresses in many cases. I told my lawyer that I would take the site down if he challenged the monitoring as directed. The idea was to scare him with the thought of causing him so much work that he would realize making my case his top priority was the best thing he could do to make sure he might still have time for his other clients. I also explained that the addresses were posted in response to three things. The first thing was Demer or "someone" in his office leaking a confidential jail document into a public case file containing my SSN and all my medical information which gave my stalker leverage she could never have legally obtained while allowing her to say it was legally obtained from a public case file. The second thing was the government protecting someone that posted addresses of my relatives on her website even after I told them that I would do the same to them if they enabled her at all. The third thing was Assistant United States Attorney Sean Hoar or "someone" in his office issuing a press release with my old address in it on top of the false narrative. My reaction to that release was the "outburst" reported by the computer room staff at NWRRC. I partly blame that "outburst" on my own people for failing to monitor the internet and send me all mentions of my case as directed. Had they done so instead of intentionally keeping me in the dark and refusing to help me fight back at all, the release would not have been a surprise. I demanded that the address be removed from Justice.gov and other federal law enforcement websites. The government eventually capitulated. Some might say I censored the government. I responded by blocking the address field on pages like this one and focusing the map on the center of town. However, that address block will fail if I am prevented from logging into my account for more than 14 days. I typed "unknown" into the address field for this article to trigger the censor as a demo.
I was of course found guilty of violating the conditions of my release, but was acquitted of the most serious violation. My alleged violations included failure to participate in computer monitoring, failing to follow the instructions of the probation officer, and contacting the victim. That last one was for a post I wrote about the lies my stalker told, how crazy she is, and how the government had basically broken the plea agreement which included a part stemming from my . I had already removed her STD report at the request of the author before my arrest, so everything left at that point was due to our fight over my refusal to remove a post that her ex could have removed at any time simply by verifying his email address or logging into his account. Instead, he strung me along for months sending me emails trying to do everything he could to verify who he was without verifying ownership of the account or the email used at sign up. He had me thinking he was either an impostor or a chicken shit afraid of being linked to the account. He was the latter, but in his defense he seemed to be under duress. He always insisted in his emails to me that everything in his report was true, but he was afraid of her and Demer. I knew that posting about someone is not the same as contacting them even if you know they will read it. My lawyers argued that at my violation hearing and won, so she wasn't so legitimate after all.
In late 2011, she presented herself as a victim enforcing a lawful no contact order when in fact she was abusing a no contact order to stop someone from exercising his First Amendment rights. That press release seemed like an effort to reduce the value of the plea "deal" on my end by re-posting some of the same stuff. I had made it clear that if anyone followed in her footsteps I would re-post stuff about her in ways intended to direct her removal efforts towards that person. The release also pushed a false narrative with no regard for chronological accuracy. They mixed up the order of events to make it appear as though she stalked me in response to a monetary demand of $10,000 for the removal of the report when in fact it was only a search engine suppression service priced far lower. I didn't up the price to $10,000 until after I had proof that she was the one stalking me and confronted her about it. I gave her a fuck off price because I didn't want her business. Think about it, if she wouldn't pay 10% of that or 5% of that during promotions why would someone in my position have any reasonable expectation of her paying so much more? That is why my later threat was not extortionate because it wasn't really an attempt to get money. My conduct after sending it that day included a retraction. I was not arrested until 3 days later. However, after I threatened to use my sites against the detectives in the interrogation room (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7dhlcFJlvM), Deputy District Attorney Kevin Demer decided to repeat everything she said as if it were a verified fact from then on out. Demer also got my bail increased from $25,000 to $1,000,000 simply by swearing to the court that he thought I intended to kill the victim if released. If he really thought I was going to kill her why did he wait 3 days to send the Warrant Strike Team? Probably because it took that long for him to talk to Hoar and decide that was their best shot at ever being able to legally do anything to me.
Demer's name was not new to me because her ex had sent me emails accusing him of misconduct in his case and she referred to him as not being pleased with my decision not to remove the report. I found it odd that he would prosecute me himself due to his prior association with the alleged victim. An ethical prosecutor would have recused himself. It seemed odd that he would take issue with the internet postings at that time when he could have done something months earlier simply by emailing me if it were in fact true that the named defendant was subject to an order requiring removal. I told my stalker to have him send it to me because unlike most cases there was no disputing who wrote the report. The author signed up with an email address from a domain registered in his own name.
Demer also got me banned from using the phone for anything but attorney calls. The jail staff enforced it by making me a "walk alone" so that they would only have me to watch when I got out of my cell for 2 hours a day. They also said it was so I wouldn't get other inmates to make calls for me, but that aspect of it was easily circumventable. The justification for the phone ban was absurd. Demer suggested that I could potentially have a mysterious unidentified accomplice waiting for a green light on the outside.
My phone ban was overturned in part thanks to Mohamed Mohamud whose last use of a phone as a free man made it easy for my lawyer to say that if he was allowed to use the phone then I certainly should be. Mohamud's last use of a phone as a free man was a pair of calls to what he believed to be a detonator wired to an 1,800 pound fertilizer bomb. It turned out to be a fake planted by the FBI (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Portland_car_bomb_plot). He gave me permission to use him as an example of someone more deserving of a phone ban than me. If he was allowed to use the phone after trying to use one to blow up a Christmas tree lighting ceremony then surely I should have been allowed to use the phone. The judge agreed. I'm sure Hunter Moore was allowed to use the phone.
My bail stayed at $1,000,000 until the case was moved to federal court the following year. The goal of the high bail was clearly to buy time for the feds to investigate my business. When the local judge told Demer to take the case to trial or drop it, I was indicted in federal court. In Oregon there is no bail in federal court. If you're neither a flight risk nor a danger to the community you're supposed to be released for free with conditions. The downside of that is if you're declared a danger to the community like I was there is no way out because instead of having a high bail you have no bail. Hunter Moore was grated pretrial release which allowed him to get his affairs in order before going to prison. I had no such luxury. However, unlike Moore I have a spinal cord and would not have remained silent if released. That was the real reason for the high bail and denial of pretrial release. They knew that I would use my sites and more to expose who they were and what they were doing. The federal system doesn't require that the defendant pose a physical danger to anyone to be declared a danger to the community because they define danger to include violations of pretrial release conditions. If the court knows that the defendant will not comply with unconstitutional speech restrictions as release conditions that person is considered a danger to the community.
Everyone has a First Amendment right to disparage those that weaponize the courts against them provided they don't lie or in the case of no contact orders include language directed directly at them like "Jane Doe, if you're reading this I think you're crazy." Defendants and convicts are no different. When you plead guilty to a crime you lose some of your constitutional rights, but freedom of speech is not one of them. Yet, the courts are frequently abused in efforts to silence true speech in the name of victim protection. Unlike me, Hunter Moore's conditions included, "The defendant shall not attempt to locate the victims or the victims' families or attempt to obtain information concerning the whereabouts, phone numbers, email addresses, or other personal identifiers of the victims or the victims' families." That condition and a sister condition prohibiting him from possessing "personal identifying information of the victims" were likely the results of concessions offered by Moore himself to assure a lighter sentence. If challenged it could likely be argued that the conditions constitute an unconstitutional restraint on speech capable of crippling the information gathering capabilities of investigative journalists in violation of the First Amendment.
There are some other differences in my case which might explain the actions of probation. Specifically, the unlawful seizure of a list from an envelope of mine clearly marked confidential legal material which contained correspondence with my attorney. I also had my sites standing by ready to be re-activated upon payment to the hosting company. They said the server was just sitting there because they'd already performed a backup service for my attorney. I basically had my boys at the hosting company standing back and standing by. That is why I was banned from directing any third party to use a computer on my behalf. If I were to have re-launched the sites while still at NWRRC as a pre-release inmate, I would just get sent back to Sheridan for the remainder of my sentence and lose 30 days good time. Publicly humiliating the government by turning my sites back on while technically still a Bureau of Prisons (BOP) inmate would have been worth losing 30 days good time and having to do the rest of my time in the hole. The consequences wouldn't have really gotten real for me until I was released and actually on supervision instead of being an inmate finishing a sentence. That is why when the monitoring software was finally installed at NWRRC after nearly two months, they found any excuse they could to justify banning me from computers. I tend to run circles around corrections personnel intellectually and that intimidates them. Often all they can do is gang up on me and make stuff up. They knew my skills were better than theirs and decided to stop me from using them entirely. One staff member once told me off the record, "people above me think you can't be trusted with your skillset." I took that to mean that I was miles beyond my P.O. in terms of computer skills and she probably didn't think she could keep up.
Despite how cool it would have been to humiliate the government by re-launching my sites from a correctional facility, I offered never to run them again. I told Worthey that the best chance they had of making sure the sites never came back was to let me seek work in my field because with the right fit there was a good chance I might have decided I was too busy or just didn't want to piss off my boss by the time I got off supervision. She should have accepted that offer. Instead, I received a consecutive 24 month sentence for assaulting a federal employee. That employee quit and received a $25,000 settlement from NWRRC. My points were increased more than they should have been, so I couldn't go back to Sheridan because its just a medium. There are no high security facilities in the northwest, so they sent me to Victorville. Mohamud was sent to Victorville as well, but he was at the medium across the street. Hunter Moore was sent to a low.
When I arrived in Victorville, I found out that I had 24 points. That is the bare minimum necessary to be there. They included a small number of points for minor history of escape in the past 5 years. They said NWRRC wrote me up for "technical escape" after leaving NWRRC without prior written authorization by being arrested, placed in a Portland Police car and taken to jail. I was found guilty in absentia and Victorville Disciplinary Hearings Officer (DHO) Diana Elliott upheld it despite not being able to provide a credible answer to the question, "how do you escape into a police car?" The regional office overturned her decision on appeal.
I was released from Victorville in May of 2016. LaCoste was decided just a couple days after I met Preuitt for the first time and was told I did not have permission to use a computer. I responded by filing a pro se motion to modify my conditions and a second motion for appointment of counsel. I was forced to wait until October for a hearing after which my conditions were changed to allow monitored access. For reasons already explained, I ended up getting violated. I received a six month revocation with slightly modified conditions of supervision. My new conditions included a restriction on posting home addresses of government officials on this website and the removal of information about named "victims" in my cases which I agreed to because the government redacted some of their bullshit from their press release, but probation did not succeed at getting me banned from computers again or ordered to take this site down thanks to LaCoste. I was still banned from operating any of my old websites or providing any sort of reputation management services. Hunter Moore had no employment restrictions.
At one point I got lucky and was able to take advantage of a then soon to be overturned Ninth Circuit precedent which required that my supervision time not be tolled for the time I spent in pre-trial detention due to what happened about a week before I was supposed to be sentenced for my violation. A deputy broke my arm and several falsely accused me of assault. As a result, the majority of my remaining 24 months of supervision were served in custody. The motive behind the arm breaking seems to be my threat to post information about jail staff on this website. As trial approached, the government provided no evidence of anybody being injured other than myself. Deputies that claimed to have been punched and kicked didn't seek medical attention or take pictures. My lawyers retained a bruise expert to testify that anyone struck as hard as they claimed would have been bruised. They also hired a biomechanics expert to show that my arm couldn't possibly have been broken in the manner claimed by deputies (https://copblaster.com/uploads/files/expert-witness-report_compressed.pdf). That was enough to make the government change their tone. AUSA Greg Nyhus was replaced. His replacement quickly and kindly offered me time served even though the guidelines recommended more if I pled to the lesser charge of impeding a federal officer for throwing a handful of spicy chips in the face of Deputy Timothy Barker as he entered my cell. I would never have been charged for that in the first place had it not been for the more serious accusations of injury based solely on the statements of deputies with no real evidence. Hunter Moore never had his arm broken by jail staff and was never held without evidence. I was the victim of selective prosecution (https://copblaster.com/uploads/files/selective-prosecution-motion.pdf).
When I got out, I only had a few months of supervision time left on my old cases. I spent a lot of that time trying to find a lawyer to help me sue the county for intentionally breaking my arm. I thought with an expert on board already some lawyer would hop on it. However, the government's smear campaign had discredited me so much that every lawyer lost interest the second they found out about the guilty plea. They didn't think a jury could look past the optics of a guilty defendant suing the named victim in a case no matter how many experts are thrown at them. They wouldn't say it out loud, but I suspect they researched my history, noticed that three of my prior lawyers had withdrawn from my underlying case citing non-violent conflicts and probably figured we'd get into some sort of conflict eventually. Hunter Moore only had one lawyer quit on him. Still, I was surprised not to land one because it was obvious that my arm was not broken during the cell extraction on the fifth floor, but rather on the fourth floor in a cell while I was face down on a mattress with 300 pounds of Barker on my back. I wasn't going to let them get away with that, so I sued them myself. I had started practicing law in prison by representing myself in an ineffective assistance of counsel claim. The claim ultimately failed, but I pushed it into the Ninth Circuit all by myself which is rare. Certificates of Appealability (COAs) are seldom granted by district courts in ineffective counsel claims brought by inmates against their plea/trial phase counsel. Almost every inmate tries to find his lawyer incompetent somehow. COAs are granted "only if the applicant has made a substantial showing of the denial of a constitutional right." 2253(c)(2). The idea is to make it so that appellate courts are not overburdened by every inmate that appeals every unfavorable decision from the district court. Not just any idiot can get a COA. It was enough to entitle me to yet another court appointed lawyer. I had four lawyers at once for awhile.
Both of my appeals were heard the same day and I lost them both (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Chn6OlKg29g). I didn't get back online until March of 2019. Probation finally assigned a competent officer to my case. He let me use Remote-com monitoring software instead of IPPC. It worked great. In September of 2019 I brought back some of my old sites after my supervision in my first case expired. Thanks to the Dutch server none of the websites ever fell into government hands. I did the same thing with this site in 2017. When I got out in late 2018 this site was still up. The primary reason they were able to take my sites down in 2012 was because I was in the process of migrating to a different company. I wasn't paid up very long because I'd outgrown them. Despite that, syndicators stayed up until early the following year and affiliated social media accounts were still live when I got out.
In 2020, I was finally able to tell my side to The Daily Caller (https://dailycaller.com/2020/08/16/cyrus-sullivan-cop-blaster-std-carriers-death-threat/). The article pointed out that I "still operate the websites and services that prosecutors said in 2013 was a fraud." The only way I could clear my name after the government's smear campaign was to bring back the sites while still on federal supervision. Had they been illegal I would have been charged with violating a standard condition of supervision against engaging in new criminal conduct. Brining them back was necessary to clear my name. Now people know that I never operated a criminal enterprise.
You can watch Moore talk about his supervision time in the video below.