Operators of sex offender sites are arrested on fraud charges
Sex offenders were Charles Rodrick’s business. For years, the Arizona website owner targeted people who had been arrested for sex crimes and demanded payments for removal of online profiles.
When they complained or resisted, Rodrick responded with promises of greater exposure and humiliation, according to computer, court and other records.
His online intimidation campaign expanded after 2011 to include perceived critics: a judge, multiple lawyers, his exwife, a defense contractor and an Arizona Republic reporter.
On Tuesday, federal and state authorities arrested Rodrick at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport after he stepped off a flight from Costa Rica.
In the early morning hours on Wednesday, Rodrick made his initial court appearance before a Maricopa County Superior Court judge on charges of fraud, conducting an illegal
enterprise, computer tampering and harassment.
Two of Rodrick’s associates, Arizona residents Brent Oesterblad and Sarah Shea, also were charged.
Assistant Attorney General Nicole Shaker said Wednesday that Rodrick has threatened law enforcement officials, and she asked the court to seize his passport, restrict his access to guns and make him wear an ankle monitor.
“He has stated that if he feels his freedom is going to be taken away, then he will go down shooting,” Shaker said.
Rodrick, who appeared without an attorney, told the judge he had never threatened anyone. He described himself as a gun collector and said taking away his weapons “would be a little harsh.”
He said his arrest is based on old allegations and came as a shock.
“I have not done anything to anyone,” Rodrick said. “I have not sent emails. I have not made phone calls. I have not the (web)sites in which they refer to. I rid myself of them in 2017. It just caused too many legal problems.”
Authorities accuse Rodrick, 60, who also uses the name Charles Gilson, of illegally scraping data from National Predator Database and using it in what has been described as an online extortion racket.
National Predator Database is a private company that correlates sex offender conviction data from all 50 states and makes it publicly available.
Authorities say Rodrick, Oesterblad and Shea monetized the data for personal gain. According to indictments unsealed Wednesday, the trio profiled offenders on websites and then demanded money to take them down.
But even after their targets paid, some of their profiles stayed up. Or worse, the profiles would be republished on other websites owned by Rodrick, the indictments allege.
Authorities said Rodrick, Oesterblad and Shea didn’t stop there. They harassed other victims who were not listed in the National Predator Database by posting fraudulent sex offender profiles on Rodrick’s websites, authorities said.
The case is being prosecuted by the Arizona Attorney General’s Office. The charges cap a years-long investigation of Rodrick and his websites by the Phoenix office of the FBI.
The federal probe followed an investigation by The Arizona Republic that began in 2013 and documented Rodrick’s operation and his online threats. Stories detailed how he obtained his data and went after offenders, even after their records were expunged or their names were removed from law enforcement databases.
Rodrick operated three key websites called SORArchives.com, Offendex.com and Onlinedetective.com. The websites are now shut down.
Records obtained by The Republic showed that Rodrick and his associates threatened to expose offenders, their families and friends on the internet. They got into hostile internet exchanges with sex offenders listed on the website.
“Since you like Facebook so much ... we have added your 65 friends to your page on Offendex,” a website operator said in a Nov. 9, 2012, email. “We will release your record to five more search engines plus a few other ‘special spots’ that you do not want to be.”
Rodrick ensured that anyone in his databases could be found easily on a Google search. They prominently profiled specific individuals, published their home and email addresses, posted photographs of their relatives and copied their Facebook friends onto the offender websites.
In another email, operators told an offender: “Enjoy the exposure you have created for yourself . ... Unfortunately you took (your) family with you.”
Offendex offered users two options: Pay $79 for a review of a records-removal request or $499 for a no-questionsasked removal.
SORArchives used the same options, along with a free review service that could take up to eight weeks, an expedited removal for $79 and an “instant removal” with no price listed.
Emails, court records and interviews showed that $79 removal requests sometimes ended in denials and renewed demands to pay $499.
The Republic in 2013 found that local, state and federal authorities failed to act on numerous complaints.
Those included complaints to the FBI, the Federal Trade Commission and the Internet Crime Complaint Center, which works with the FBI to refer internet criminal cases to various agencies. Complaints also were filed with attorneys general in five states, including Arizona.
Rodrick once bragged that he was untouchable. In a recorded call obtained by The Republic, Rodrick said law enforcement wasn’t going to help offenders.
“The attorney generals aren’t going to help you,” Rodrick said. “This is what we do. We are the internet.”
Rodrick and Oesterblad both have fraud convictions. Rodrick, who has lived in Tempe, Chandler, Cave Creek, Phoenix and Flagstaff, pleaded guilty in 1993 to selling illegal cable-television descramblers with fraudulent intent.
Oesterblad, formerly of Paradise Valley, pleaded guilty in 1992 for his part in a frequent-flyer scam operated out of his family’s Phoenix travel agency and spent 10 months in a federal prison. He at one time was married to Shea.
In his court appearance on Wednesday, Rodrick painted himself as a longtime Arizona businessman ready to answer any charges.
“I don’t hide,” he said. “I do all of my banking in Arizona. I do business in Arizona. I have property in Arizona. I just built a house, a $1.5 million house in Page.”
Shaker told the court that Rodrick wasn’t being honest. She said his assets are hidden behind companies or are in the names of his girlfriends. She said he owes millions of dollars in court-ordered judgments and has for years dodged collection efforts.
She said his businesses are internetbased and that he owns property in Mexico. Authorities are concerned he could move his operations and flee the United States in order to avoid prosecution.
The judge seemed inclined to agree. He ordered Rodrick held on $30,000 bond and ordered him to wear an ankle monitor as a condition of release.
The judge did not order the seizure of Rodrick’s guns.
As Rodrick’s websites gained national attention, he retaliated with lawsuits against those who challenged the legality of his operation and went after others online, computer and court records showed.
He posted profiles of people on sex offender websites, even though they didn’t have criminal records. He created websites to accuse lawyers of corruption. He filed complaints against a judge who ruled against him. He launched a series of Facebook ad campaigns against a Republic reporter.
His websites displayed personal information, including addresses and Social Security numbers of people he believed had crossed him. His sites implied they were child molesters, or at least supported child molesters.
Arizona juries twice ordered Rodrick to pay damages to people he targeted. Both juries dismissed claims brought by sex offenders and instead awarded damages to those who had not been convicted of any crimes.
A Maricopa County jury in 2014 awarded three victims $3.4 million, saying Rodrick defamed them, invaded their privacy, put them in a false light and abused the court system by filing lawsuits against them as a form of retaliation. The amount was later reduced on appeal.
The lawsuits came as a stunning reversal for Rodrick, who initially had sued the victims for defamation. But during the trial, the judge allowed counterclaims filed by the defendants against Rodrick to go forward. The ruling forced Rodrick to defend himself in his own lawsuit.
A key figure in the case was David Ellis, a 26-year veteran of the Marine Corps and president of a Phoenix-based aerospace company. Ellis said his name first appeared on one of Rodrick’s websites after he began dating Rodrick’s exwife, Lois Flynn.
Flynn, the mother of Rodrick’s two children, also was not spared harassment. Rodrick’s websites accused her of infidelity and alcoholism. The jury in 2014 awarded Ellis $2.2 million and Flynn $780,000. It awarded $467,000 to the mother of a convicted sex offender.
A federal jury in 2016 awarded Ellis another $325,000. It found Rodrick put him in a false light and intentionally inflicted emotional harm in web postings that accused him of infidelity, having sex with young boys and defrauding the U.S. government.
Rodrick sent complaints to the U.S. Department of Defense in 2015 calling for an investigation of Ellis’ company, American Aerospace Technical Castings, claiming that Ellis manufactured faulty airline parts for commercial and military airplanes and falsified test results.
Ellis said Rodrick also accused him of workplace sexual harassment.
Rodrick’s lawyer argued that his client did nothing wrong and that his online activity was protected by federal law. He said Rodrick had immunity from lawsuits because the information posted on the sex-offender websites came from third parties and he was just republishing “freely available information” similar to any news site.
Ellis said Wednesday he was pleased to hear Rodrick had been arrested and charged.
“After 10 years, the news that justice will prevail was very much a relief,” Ellis said. “It is something for the anguish and mental suffering that myself and other family members went through.”
Ellis said a conviction will ensure Rodrick will account for his misdeeds.
“It is my hope that all of this will justify Mr. Rodrick’s understanding that you cannot use money influence or the internet to cause pain and suffering to other people,” Ellis said.