FBI Closes down Mr Double site.

[wayne3218]

With the underage story sites starting to be purged and closed down, I wonder how much longer before the FBI, come after KB and request their membership lists.

[herschel]

So now we can all sleep better at night, knowing the FBI is working to protect fictional people from fictional crimes.

[MissBarbara]

So now we can all sleep better at night, knowing the FBI is working to protect fictional people from fictional crimes.

Did you actually read the story?

If you had, you would have read this:

"The FBI was able to identify multiple subscribers to the web site who had prior convictions for sex crimes against children."

Those children who were sexually assaulted certainly weren't fictional, nor were the men who assaulted them.

To my mind, tacitly defending people convicted of sexually abusing children is almost as evil as the assaults themselves.

[psiberzerker]

It's easy to ignore the actual victims with the phrase "Her bald pussy" repeating over and over in his head.

[_priapism]

At the risk of saying “I told you so,“ I told you so.

The question isn’t what is legal or what isn’t legal. The question is, can an overzealous prosecutor make the life of the defendant a living hell? That answer is most affirmatively “yes.“

We do not have the financial resources to fight a protect protracted battle over what constitutes protected speech under the First Amendment. The sex offenders using the website will definitely face parole revocations and/or additional charges. The subject of this raid, and the pending criminal charges, is the owner of the website. It’s not against the authors, nor the subscribers. It is solely against the owner. This is what concerns me.

Making money off subscriptions takes this into a different category, since he was arguably selling kiddie porn.  The problem is indefensible subject matter.  I would not want to test an argument that child rape stories have “serious literary merit.”  No judge or jury would go on the record saying they do.

We have certainly made efforts to clean up our website, the forum content, and make sure members are not engaging in online criminal activity. Ordinarily, a forum website has no responsibility for user content.  Otherwise, they would shut down Facebook tomorrow.  But I would consider this prosecution a shot across everyone’s bow.

And it does confirm the FBI is reading online porn.  So think about that when you post.

[psiberzerker]

I would not want to test an argument that child rape stories have “serious literary merit.” 

Beyond Lolita, but you're not Nabokov.  We have to err on the side of caution.  Weighing the potential for children being sexually exploited against perverts finding something to jerk off to, the victims get the benefit of the doubt.  There is no "Innocence" when it comes to sexualizing children.  In fact, that innocence is what it corrupts.

[seveninchblues]

I was not aware that Mr Double was charging people to read their stories.  Pretty stupid if you don't want to get caught.  Nothing leaves a paper trail like money.

[HppyHrryHrdn]

Not that I've ever done anything even close to illegal, but personally I'm taking my clues of warding of the FBI from Hillary. Running Bleachbit (https://www.bleachbit.org/download) as often as possible and keeping anything related to this and other sites on a flash drive that is easily hit with a hammer.  I don't have the money or the inclination to deal with those fools.

[DiscipleN]

I looked to see if this was being discussed. I think it's important news for members here.


newswest9.com/article/news/crime/fbi-arrest-man-website-child-sexual-abuse/513-465c4891-926a-4a4e-8674-3335814dd810

bigbendsentinel.com/2019/11/13/federal-raid-rocks-terlingua/

newswest9.com/article/news/crime/terlingu-locals-react-to-thomas-arthur-arrest-fbi-raid/513-d3ee7368-99eb-4f04-a2fb-62c845b85b1d

[_priapism]

Already a thread about this.

http://www.kristensboard.com/forums/index.php?topic=66385.0

Don’t know how many threads we need.

[Lois]

Already a thread about this.

http://www.kristensboard.com/forums/index.php?topic=66385.0

Don’t know how many threads we need.

Merged into the already existing thread now.

[dc]

I was not aware that Mr Double was charging people to read their stories.  Pretty stupid if you don't want to get caught.  Nothing leaves a paper trail like money.

Surprised they didn't charge him with money laundering. If he had been convicted of that, That alone carries a maximum penalty of 20 years per count. That's the main charge that "OmiInaHellCat" is facing for running that illegal "Gears Reloaded" IPTV service.

[Guy Fawkes]

I was not aware that Mr Double was charging people to read their stories.  Pretty stupid if you don't want to get caught.  Nothing leaves a paper trail like money.

Surprised they didn't charge him with money laundering. If he had been convicted of that, That alone carries a maximum penalty of 20 years per count. That's the main charge that "OmiInaHellCat" is facing for running that illegal "Gears Reloaded" IPTV service.

My understanding is Arthur didn't take cryptocurrency; he only accepted credit-cards. If he had accepted cryptocurrency, money-laundering charges would almost inevitably have ensued.

I'm also under the impression that they wanted this case as a test-case of sorts, to validate the prosecution for text-only obscenity -- perhaps they thought the introduction of money-laundering might cloud the issue?

[Guy Fawkes]

Press Release
Man Sentenced for Running Child Obscenity Website
Thursday, October 5, 2023
For Immediate Release
Office of Public Affairs

A California man was sentenced today to 33 years and nine months in prison for multiple obscenity crimes involving children. 

According to the indictment, Ron Kuhlmeyer, 65, of Santa Rosa, operated a website that globally distributed stories about the rape, murder, and sexual abuse of prepubescent children. Law enforcement determined that Kuhlmeyer was running his obscenity website from Belize. Kuhlmeyer wrote many of the stories himself but also published the works of other offenders, including stories that had been previously published on Mr. Double, another website dedicated to publishing writings that detail the sexual abuse of children. Some of the stories on Kuhlmeyer’s website described the rape, torture, and murder of children, while others were accompanied by lifelike computer-generated images of prepubescent children being sexually abused. 

On June 13, Kuhlmeyer pleaded guilty to five counts of importation or transportation of obscene matters and one count of distributing obscene visual representations of the sexual abuse of children. Kuhlmeyer was previously convicted of Continuous Sexual Abuse of a Child in Sonoma County, California, in 2008 and served six years in state prison.

In June 2021, Thomas Arthur, the owner of Mr. Double, was sentenced to 40 years in prison.

Acting Assistant Attorney General Nicole M. Argentieri of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, U.S. Attorney Jaime Esparza for the Western District of Texas, Special Agent in Charge Francisco Burrola of Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) El Paso, and Assistant Director Luis Quesada of the FBI’s Criminal Investigation Division made the announcement.

HSI and the FBI investigated the case, with assistance from the government of Belize.

Trial Attorneys Austin M. Berry and Adam Braskich of the Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS) and Assistant U.S. Attorney Brandi Young for the Western District of Texas prosecuted the case.

This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative to combat the epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse, launched in May 2006 by the Justice Department. Led by U.S. Attorneys’ Offices and CEOS, Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state, and local resources to better locate, apprehend and prosecute individuals who exploit children via the internet, as well as to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.justice.gov/psc.

Updated October 5, 2023

[MintJulie]

Woo #8 for sharing this article Guy.  Thank you. 

[Writers Bloque]

And still the loophole at Pornhub still allows cp, rape and human trafficking video's, I mean I am all for removing cp in any form from the internet, but against it becoming a witch hunt. (Also really not a fan of abuse, rape, murder cp in any form too. That's the only reason I never joined Mr. Double's site. Because my writing is meant to be fluff, not seriously disturbing. And i seen the content and was completely turned off.)

[Pornhubby]

Pay no attention to the lawyer, but I really think posting and discussing the criminality of certain types of pornography is not a good thing for us to be doing. Because it basically negates any “plausible deniability“ if we are ever accused of anything.

A recently banned member accused us of being a “fake FBI site.” We are not, but I hate the implications of that suggestion.

[Guy Fawkes]

And still the loophole at Pornhub still allows cp, rape and human trafficking video's, I mean I am all for removing cp in any form from the internet, but against it becoming a witch hunt. (Also really not a fan of abuse, rape, murder cp in any form too. That's the only reason I never joined Mr. Double's site. Because my writing is meant to be fluff, not seriously disturbing. And i seen the content and was completely turned off.)

I've seen variants of this argument raised time and again, particularly on ASSD (alt.sex.stories.discussion): How is it that sites X, Y & Z are still operating, and they have underage materials?

Other arguments used by posters in ASSD go like this:  Frank McCoy was found with CP, and that is why they went after him. I don't collect CP, and therefore I'll be safe. Then there's Mr. Double: Mr. Double was selling materials -- I'm not selling materials, so I'll be safe. 

No one appears to want to acknowledge that distribution of stories (or links to where such materials could be found) were the primary reason that both men were gone after in the first place.

The other common factor that McCoy, Arthur and Kuhlmeyer shared were that they made themselves easy to find.

Over the years, I've argued that people should not break the law; that said, if they feel they must break the law, they should not make themselves easy to find -- rather, they should make themselves hard targets.

When I looked at most of the posters in ASSD, I was greatly dismayed to see the number of valid clearnet email addresses: e.g. Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook, etc. Some people were even talking about setting up hosting sites with accounts linked to these very same clearnet addresses.

[Guy Fawkes]

Pay no attention to the lawyer, but I really think posting and discussing the criminality of certain types of pornography is not a good thing for us to be doing. Because it basically negates any “plausible deniability“ if we are ever accused of anything.

Virtually every poster in ASSD is guilty of this. Some of them are guilty of the very same crime (providing a link to where obscene materials may be found) that was used to prosecute Frank McCoy and Thomas Arthur (Mr. Double).  Virtually none of them has any plausible deniability whatsoever, and they have not made themselves hard to find, by any means -- instead, they've left themselves wide-open.  All that will be required to take them down is a cop with enough motivation to do so.

A recently banned member accused us of being a “fake FBI site.” We are not, but I hate the implications of that suggestion.

Understandable.