US Attorney Brian Schroder with the Department of Justice announced on Tuesday that an Anchorage man was sentenced on Monday for cyberstalking his former girlfriend while out on release on impending domestic violence case where the girlfriend was the victim.

Chief U.S. District Judge Timothy Burgess sentenced Jeffery Ray Ward to 40 months in prison followed by three years of supervised release after he pleaded guilty on September 27, 2017, to a count of cyberstalking in violation of a domestic violence protective order. Ward had been previously convicted in Anchorage of the domestic violence offense when this new offense occurred.

The court documents showed that on April 16, 2017, police received a 911 call from Ward’s former girlfriend reporting that he had violated his conditions of release in the domestic violence case where he was ordered to have no contact with the victim, by threatening to put the victim’s “Dirt on Blast.” He then hacked “her social media accounts and posted nude, sexually explicit pictures of the victim for hundreds of her friends and family to see.”

Ward went even further, and while impersonating the victim, posted direct messages to “engage
in sexually explicit communications with the victim’s prior boyfriend,” court records revealed. The victim found that she was unable to regain control of her social media because Ward had changed the email address associated with her account to one that belonged to Ward, making it impossible for her to change her password and to correct the damage done.[xyz-ihs snippet=”Adsense-responsive”]Because of Ward’s history of past domestic violence offenses in the state, as well and in other states, Judge Burgess advised Ward that “to call this a serious crime is an understatement,” and went on to say that “he was concerned about protecting other women” in the community.

The case stemmed from an investigation carried out by Patrol Officers and Detectives with the Cyber Crimes Unit of the Anchorage Police Department.

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