Website owner sentenced for making email threats
PORTLAND – A Portland man has been sentenced to prison for threatening a woman in a bitter dispute over his website that allows people to post names of others and allege that they have sexually transmitted diseases.
His court-appointed attorney said Cyrus Andrew Sullivan, 30, had a policy of removing names from the site only if the people named submitted medical records showing they did not have a disease, or if they paid him fees of up to $1,000, the Oregonian reported.
Sullivan was sentenced Thursday to two years for sending threatening emails to the woman. Her name and the false allegation she had a sexually transmitted disease had been added to the site by a former boyfriend previously convicted of harassing her, the paper reported.
When Sullivan wouldn’t take down the post, she fought back. The woman anonymously posted Sullivan’s personal information, including mental health diagnoses believed to have been taken from court documents, anonymously posted taunting YouTube videos and sent emails, one of which said, “We can find you. We can find your family too,” lawyers for the defense and prosecution said.
Last June, Sullivan sent a series of threatening emails to the victim, Assistant U.S. Attorney Sean Hoar said.
One said, “You just don’t learn your lessons do you? Now I have no choice but to come to your house armed and put an end to you once and for all. The only way you can stop this is by removing your stalker site and paying me $10,000. You don’t have a choice.”
Sullivan pleaded guilty in April.
Two years is the top of the sentencing range under federal guidelines for his conviction for making a threatening communication.
Hernandez also ordered three years of supervised release and said Sullivan couldn’t use computers or similar devices without written approval of his probation officer, aimed at ensuring Sullivan doesn’t revive the site.
“I am taking it away,” Hernandez said. Sullivan, however, maintained that, “I will run it till the day I die.”