Harassment, Stalking, Misconduct About to be falsely accused of ID theft. Thoughts?

[isopropoflex]

Hi all,

I have a bit of an odd situation I don't know exactly what to do about. It's a long-ish story, but I'll try to sum it up briefly.
My wife and I originally met online before we got married some 5.5 years ago. At that time (before we got married) we knew and talked to quite a few other people online. One such person (a guy from CA) developed an obsession with my wife (then GF) back then, and wanted desperately to meet her (he was convinced meeting her would change her mind about getting married to me, as she would surely choose him instead). At the time, to convince her he was a 'trustworthy' person, he sent her all his private into (names, address, SS#, names of parents, etc.). She still didn't want to meet him, but he ended up just showing up at her work one night (and got escorted out by armed security). He continued stalking her (us) until I told him off and told him to stay away.
Fast forward to about a year ago. I start receiving weird anonymous e-mails from some person who doesn't want to identify themselves. The messages started along the lines of "I know you, but you don't know who I am" and "I have been trying to track you down by any means available to me over the past year or so". This got ugly after a while (I started receiving phonecalls even), and finally he identified himself as the stalker guy from before. I again told him not ever to contact me again, and if he would, I would do anything in my power to try and dig up any information of his from old chat logs and hand it to the police for stalking. Now, I did make reference to his sending my wife all his information before, though I have never once seen this elusive file with personal information, and my wife says it has been deleted long ago. If it still existed, it would've been in the cops' hands a long time ago.
Now this person has returned once again demanding we (I) sign some contract stating we have none of his information (which neither my wife or I have any intention of doing), or he claims he is going to "go to the FBI" with our names and address for investigation for stealing his identity. He set a deadline by which this would happen (04/15).

About a month ago we made a report of this situation at our local police station, and the cop we spoke with basically laughed at the idea of his claim he will frame me for ID theft. What do you guys think about this? Is there anything I can/should do to prematurely derail any possible damage coming from such a false allegation?

In a nutshell:
- I have never laid eyes on any of his personal information
- we have told him very clearly that we don't have any of his information
- there is no proof any identity theft related activities ever occurred or originated from myself (or my wife for that matter) - this makes sense since we never did anything
- this person gave out the information voluntarily to my wife (she actually never wanted it, but he sent it anyway) and has himself stated so in his e-mails
- he has threatened before to frame me for this stuff, claiming it would be a bad thing for me considering my personal background (I'm a programmer)
- he has threatened in his correspondence that if we were to take any police action beforehand (in the form of a restraining order or lawsuit for stalking) it would just make him angry and he would just continue to monitor and track us and any family and friends once he got out just on principle.
- he has found out where we live and has said he will come out to where we live if this is still going on come summer time

The police seem to be doing very little about this. With as much as stalking is this big thing and supposedly a highly punishable offence, they don't seem to want to do anything unless someone gets hurt.

Either way, as much as I'm sure there is not much of a case here if any (for his ID theft charges), I don't want to have the bad luck of running into some prosecutor who decides to take this seriously and get messed up in a big way by some lawsuit and outrageous attorney fees for something that's got absolutely no basis in truth.

Thanks for any thoughts on this matter.

 

[isopropoflex]

Forgot

I'm in Washington state

 

[NYClex]

Well, even if people usually call the crime "identity theft" usually the obtaining of the identitiy information is not the issue (in your case you obtained it by his own volition anyway), what is a crime is USING it for fraudulent purpose. And since you don't do this, there is no case.

Otherwise, his behaviour surely is harassing. In New York State it would be criminal conduct. I don't know about Washington State, and don't have the time to check this now, but may you look for harassment or stalking laws in your state and try to figure out, if you have a case. Of ocurse, you need good evidence. Make records.

 

[isopropoflex]

Thanks

Thank you for taking the time to respond to my question.
I kind of figured there wasn't really any case since nothing happened to begin with, but it's always nice to get someone else's opinion on these kinds of things.

Now, given the facts that:

a) this person has shown a history of threatening to do things with a clear malicious intent (e.g. the whole threatening to frame me for ID theft which he claims would harm my future employment opportunities)
b) the person knows (has been told a number of times) none of the claimed information is in our posession, yet is still intent on trying this angle

would this be any grounds for a lawsuit for slander and/or defamation of character?
I'm not planning any such legal action right now (since it'd likely be a cumbersome process, not to mention potentially costly), but I'm trying to figure out what our options are.

We have looked at the possibility of a restraining order against this person as well, though if I'm not mistaken it would mean we would have to give up our home and work addresses, since a restraining order would indicate where the person would have to stay away. I know he has somehow obtained our home address, but does not know where we work. Aside from that we are in the process of moving, and don't want to hand him our new address on a silver platter (by having it listed on a R.O.)

As far as local stalking laws go - we went to the local police station to report all of this and the cop said they weren't going to do anything about it since the perpetrator lives in another state. So they haven't been a whole lot of help. Gotta love the PD..

 

[NYClex]

Hm, I posted this lately in another thread: http://www.safetyed.org/help/stalking/stalkusa.html#B

If he lives in another state it might well be some of these federal laws are applicable.

In a civil action I was rather thinking of intentional infliction of emotional distress, invasion of privacy and the like. But you are right, a civil suit is a pretty cumbersome matter.

May be things will quiet down once you move and get new phnoe # etc.