Recover Lost Documents

Authorities say that a former contractor who worked at an U.S. military base in Iraq is accused of hacking into the computers of teenage girls in the U.S., and coercing many of them into providing him inappropriate pictures of themselves.

Mike Schneider stated in his article for the Associated Press (on Yahoo! News) that Patrick Connolly was charged with a single count of computer hacking following his arrest in Atlanta, say authorities.

Six of the seven teenage girls named as victims in the criminal complaint lived in Florida, but authorities said that he contacted teenage girls from various parts of the world beginning in 2005.

The criminal complaint states that Connolly worked in Baghdad for EOD Technology Inc., a U.S. Department of Defense contractor based in Tennessee. A spokesman, however, stated that he is no longer a contract employee with the company. William Pearse, a company vice president, stated that EOD Technology officials cooperated with authorities.

Authorities said that the teenage girls first would get repeated instant messages from an unfamiliar address. When the girls asked who the sender was, they would get the response, “I’m a computer hacker.” A request from the hacker for revealing photos would soon follow. If the girls refused to do so, the hacker would threaten to post personal information on the Web about the teenagers gathered from hacking into their computers.

According the criminal complaint, Connolly threatened to harm a teenage girl’s sister, deleted permanent files on a second teenage girl’s computer for refusing to send suggestive images and warned he would send explicit webcam images made by a third teenage girl to her grandmother if she didn’t take more pictures of herself.

The criminal complaint also stated that he showed up at the Orlando workplace of the third teenage girl, who was 16 at the time, and wanted to go with her to a popular theme park, but she refused.

The complaint goes on to state that Connolly embedded programs into the computers which gave him remote control of the computers and allowed him access to photos and files belonging to the teenage girls.

A former alleged accomplice, Ivory Dickerson, aided FBI agents in their investigation after telling them that he “shared victims” with Connolly.

FBI agents increased their investigation of Connolly this past January after he allegedly contacted via Facebook one of the teenage girls he had allegedly harassed years earlier.