Telephone Terrorist - August 4, 2009
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.
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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!"
Tariq Malik, Pranknet's founder and leader, is pictured in a webcam still taken in his Windsor, Ontario bedroom.
Panicked Guest
Posing as hotel staff, Malik and a cohort call a guest to warn her of a dangerous gas leak at the Santee, California Best Western. Crying and screaming, the frantic woman, at the direction of the imposters, orders her cousin to break the room's windows and television.
Demolition Man
The prankster at the mic can hardly control his glee at the sound of windows being smashed by a duped guest who was told there was toxic gas in the hotel's hallway. Broadcast on Pranknet in spring 2009.
Internal Alert
An e-mail memo asks staffers at Choice Hotels (parent company of Comfort Inn and EconoLodge) to be vigilant in response to the wave of prank calls targeting businesses across the country.
Sheriff's Warning
In a bulletin to hotel employees, the Orange County (Florida) Sheriff's Office provides tips to combat a "new and disturbing trend...in the lodging industry."
Hit List
Lists containing the phone numbers of hundreds of potential hotel targets were kept on Pranknet's web servers and shared with those placing hoax calls. Here are screen grabs from two of those lists.
Targeting Texas
A police report details a July 5 prank at an Arby's in Baytown, Texas. A Pranknet veteran posing as a fire department representative convinced an employee to trigger the restaurant's fire suppression system, causing $4600 in damages.
A $50,000 "Prank"
A bogus sprinkler company representative convinces a Holiday Inn employee to set off the Arkansas hotel's fire alarm, smash windows, shut down electricity, and break a sprinkler head. A police report and evidence photos chronicle the costly June 6 incident.
Cruel KFC Hoax
In this call--deemed "epic" by Pranknet followers--employees of a Manchester, New Hampshire KFC disrobe and are told they have to urinate on each other to mitigate the effects of a chemical discharge. Posing as KFC corporate officials, Malik and a sidekick had tricked the workers into activating the eatery's fire suppression system.
The Merry Prankster
A proud Malik brags about his criminal exploits to a caller who responded to one of Pranknet's fake Craigslist advertisments.
"That's Horrible"
On July 20, a Pranknet member convinced a male guest at the Homewood Suites in Lexington, Kentucky to urinate into a cup for a precautionary health test. Then, posing as an apple cider company representative, he got a front desk worker to drink what she was told was a cider sample being brought to her by the guest. The tape covers the final stage of the vile, felonious hoax.
"I'm A Ghost"
In a July 31 interview, one of Pranknet's most prolific vandals spoke of how he is a "ghost on the Internet" and out of the reach of cops and journalists. The prankster, Tyler Markle, was identified by TSG the following day, but hung up on a reporter who called his Texas home.
Duping a Deputy
Broken windows. A broken mirror. Mattresses hurled out the window. An Orlando Police Department report tells the story of a vacationing member of law enforcement who fell victim to a prank call concerning a purported gas leak at a Hilton Garden Inn.
Swine Flu Bayou
Watch (via a webcam) and listen as a bogus public health official convinces an employee of a popular Louisiana Cajun restaurant to evacuate the eatery due to supposedly tainted meat.
Johnson City Flood
A front desk clerk breaks a sprinkler head, causing water to flood a Comfort Inn Suites in Tennessee. The employee was hoaxed by a Pranknet member posing as a representative of Simplex- Grinnell, a major fire alarm company.
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 (axis.r9@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.
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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.
