Original story filed with Mobile Broadcast News 8/2/2013
Photo: Gawker
It’s been almost 5 months since Trent Mays and Malik Richmond began serving their sentences for their role in the rape of a 16 year old girl. It has been about 8 months since Ky Anonymous and someone known only at the time as Bat Cat launched #oprollredroll in Steubenville, Ohio by bringing international media attention to this case. The anonymous crusaders dropped bombshell after bombshell of information to the public and media.
The methods used by Deric Lostutter (Ky) and Noah Mchugh(Bat Cat) were unorthodox, at times illegal, and questionable often leaking false information picked up and carried the world over by the media. Lostutter’s plan was to weaponize the media supposedly to demand justice for the 16 year old rape victim. Using the formula of often false information, and some truthful facts, Lostutter succeeded in his goals.
But at what cost does waging a moral war for a just cause pay when it’s started and fueled by mostly lies, and rumors with very little facts?
I’ve had the last 5 months to go over all my files and notes from the case as well as archived tweets from Deric, Bat Cat and many others, I have uncovered a pattern of inconsistences, bold faced lies, and contradictions put out by the “White Knight” of anonymous. As well as recent inconsistencies and contradictions made by Lostutter to which when i ask questions on this,my questions are deflected, or I am flat out told I have been bought out by a group the twitterverse calls The Steubenville Truthers (If I was paid off, I certainly would not be homelss living in a cave down by a Pittsburgh River, or be penniless as I struggle to continue to bring you the news.)
Before I go any further though I owe the public, and my readers an apology. When I started covering this case back in December of 2012, I was only an activist journalist/livestreamer for less than a year. My usual scope and experience was that of filming and letting the video speak for itself. I asked some questions, but as an activist journalist, I came into the case 1. not believing anything anyone said, but my approach to covering it was that of covering the activists (anonymous) letting the vids, and interviews speak for themselves. i asked some questions, but not all of the right questions. When Steubenville residents refused to speak with me back in the beginning, I stuck with the activists, and I had a hell of alot of fun covering this case. Eventually I would begin asking questions, but not all of the questions or the right questions. Alot also got by me as I was one person covering the case for 20 plus hours a day, and didn’t have time to completely fact check all of the tweets coming out. (or even pay attentiong to them all (there were thousands between December 23rd and now.) Lucky for me, I ignored the ridiculous rumors and websites as false, and stuck with real time facts of the protest and stuck with the facts of the case. (If I didn’t, god damn I’d be doing more than apologizing for missing some things.) However, inexperience is no excuse and for that I apologize.
A website was set up called Local Leaks, a site containing so much far fetched and absurd information about the case and Steubenville that encouraged supposed Steubenville residents to submit information about the case without the information being fact checked. Many false rumors such as gang rape, date rape drugs, and worse was listed on this site to which MSM ran without also fact checking. Deric Lostutter was for Local Leaks B4 he was against it, stealing a flip flop out of the Mitt Romney Campaign playbook. I looked over Local Leaks once in the beginning and knew the stories on there were too far fetched to be real, and dismissed the site entirely assuming everyone else would as well. (I was wrong on that one and should have called it out back then.)
One of Lostutter’s recent claims that local leaks was uncontrollable and he had nothing to do with the site. if so, why in the linked tweets here was he promoting the site, even tweeting me when I was covering the case, to endorse and promote local leaks as well. Most importantly, when Lostutter realized the content of Local Leaks was false, why not speak out against it insteadof waiting until June 2013 after being raided by the FBI to speak out against the site. (Note when interpool seized Commander X’s servers, local leaks was finally taken offline after months of concerned anons and citizens trying to work with X’s lawyer to either correct or remove the site.
In June, in the Jack Trapper interview, Lostutter also denies encouraging vigilante justice claiming the net is uncontrollable, yet tweets from Lostutter’s old KY Anonymous between December until his twitter account was suspended (unknown reasons-Twitter has never responded to my requests for comment on why the account was suspended) encourages just that: encouraging harrassment of suspected members involved in the rape case, people who detracted or disagreed from his goals and more. Lostutter did speak out against alleged threats against local residents and schools. . “we’re not the judges, but we’re the executioners.” is one of the more popular tweets Deric posted in regards to outing those guilty in the case. Lostutter would eventually get his account back, but then deleted his main account, and disappeared until March on a hacked Popadopalous twitter account, and then stopped tweeting from that account right around his raid by the FBI.
I’m getting ahead of myself here. Let’s go back to the beginning. The very first rally organized in Steubenville at the Jefferson County Courthouse steps. Myself along with one old friend and 2 new friends arrived at the rally right when it was beginning. I filmed and recorded as much as I could, and my associates went around to voice their support for the victim. One of my new friends were taking pictures of the rally, and posting them on twitter. This person was also in direct contact with KY and Bat Cat during the rally via twitter and other methods. The rally ended, and we adjourned to the Spot bar. Yeah, when we walked in we were screwed with a little. Not so much threatened, but you could tell we really weren’t welcome as my friend wearing an Anti Flag Hoodie was almost tossed out until I explained Anti Flag is a band from Pittsburgh and not an anti american hoodie. People fromt he bar would come into the back room where we retreatedto discuss the case with us and ask somewhat invasive questions about the protests, acctivist intentions, what we were doing there, why I was covering the case etc. We were soon joined by a 4th person, a Pittsburgh native, but now Steubenville resident who began purchasing all of our beers, and when I noticed 1 person writing down our license plate number outside, a decision was made to go to a hotel in nearby West Virginia instead of trying to leave for Pittsburgh after drinking, and that KY was texting our friend and also tweeting that Steubenville PD was targeting out of state vehicles. Just one of the many false claims by KY/Deric that I will prove false from that day. A simple review of Steubenville police radio communications archived from December 29th will prove only 2 out of state vehicles were pulled over for speeding violations. Beyond that the police chatter was a normal day in the town aside from a bunch of masked protesters visiting the town.
We stop and pick up a couple cases of beer thanks to our new Steubenville friend and checked into our hotel room to relax, expand on our newly formed friendships, discuss the rally, and the early details of the case that we knew of. Later in the night we visited the hotel bar, and again thanks to our new benefactor drank more alcohol until the bar closed, and the only time we spent our own money was when we hit the hotel casino. I can’t begin to speculate how much we all dropped in the casino, I lost $60 for sure, but after that we went back to the hotel room to hang out, have fun and eventually pass out. TAt no time were any of us alone by ourselves at any time during all of this.
Which brings us to these tweets by KY Anonymous the day after the rally and our trip. This linked tweet here describes our female friend who came with us as having to pay for everyone’s drinks in the Spot Bar, and that Steubenville residents stole her phone. Completely false. The girl had her phone with her at all times during the rally, at the bars, and in the hotel. Of course Deric knew this b/c she was talking to him and Bat Cat the entire time via twitter and other means right in front of us until she fell asleep with the phone in her hand in the hotel room. We all were pretty wasted that night, and woke up the next morning some of us wondering where our cash went until we remembered the late night casino visit. There were several other tweets about this person who was with me this night such as her hotel room was searched and ransacked, again not true b/c 5 of us stayed together. KY posted all of this information out. When I asked the girl in question about this she shurgged it off and said “yeah he just posted that b/c he likes to rile people up.” When I confronter Lostutter about this a week ago, he responded that these tweets were based off personal accounts from the girl, and that he doesn;t fact check…that I should take it up with her.” When waging a moral campaign against corruption, wouldn’t your 1st instinct be to fact check someone’s claims before posting them to incite more anger toward a town and the people involved in the case. Also, why did the girl contradict his statement with mentioning he likes to rile things up?
These are just a few false statements made by Lostutter/KY Anonymous in December 2012.|
And then came all the pastebins with people from Steubenville’s personal information on it. Not made by Ky he made sure to have someone else write up and post these pastebins and then he would distribute the lists. I canverify this as fact because I know personally who was tasked with this possible incrimintaing task.
Let’s move forward a bit, well we’re gonna bounce around a bit because well I haven’t slept yet and am injured and working against medical advice.
On December 23rd when the roll red roll website was originally hacked (later Ky would say they just guessed the site’s password to which Bat Cat would proudly say he did all the hacking, but later also backed up Deric’s claim that they just guessed a password) released the contents of Jim park’s emails. Parks was the website owner, and the emails contained mostly spam email, and some business emails, but also contained pictures of women either neud, in lingerie or in sexually selfie poses. The allegations were made that these girls were underage. These allegations were false. False allegations to which Lostutter finally admitted were bogus claims sometime after he was raided by the FBI in April 2013. Yet another huge mistake/lie/rumor used to incite people’s anger. Parks would later promise legal action to the fullest extent of the law, a promise which he made good on. (it is still unclear if Batcat aka Noah Mcghugh is facing charges like Deric is for the website takeover. However Ky would tweet and tweet again that they hacked Park’s website.
On January 5, 2013 Ky posted this Tweet suggesting if not for him, and the now enraged world, this case would never have been prosecuted. That is also a false statement. Trent Mays and Malik Richmond were arrested and charged 2 weeks after the rape occured. 4 months before anonymous and activists got involved in this case. No matter what side of the argument you’re on regarding this subject, it is my personal opinion that without the international attention, a grand jury would not be hearing evidence since April about others who potentially may or may have not also commited crimes during the rape investigation or directly being involved with not reporting the rape. The visiting judge was already way into place in October, 2 months before #oprollredroll was engaged.
One day later, Lostutter would accuse an innocent teen of giving Jane Doe a roofie. FALSE AGAIN. Jane Doe was not drugged as evidenced by medical records from the rape report I have seen as well as Jane’s own testimony in court. However, text messages from JD to other teens did suggest she thought she was drugged. Sadly, it was just a case of her getting to drunk off liquor and beer.
On January 7th, Deric made this tweet regarding the cameraman of the Nodianos video. The camera man has been identified through court testimony as Evan Westlake although earlier this week, Lostutter started accusing Anthony Craig of being the cameraman.
Throughout this time, Deric inserted himself into the main stream media as their media darling as it pertains to Steubenville. Something I can confirm at this time that the majority of the media interviews done with Lostutter were solicited by Lostutter himself and NOT the media outlets.
Jumping back to January 5th, Ky made this claim that Anonymous’ role in this case isn’t to solve the crime, but to try to get the fbi involved in a coverup (never any evidence of a coverup has been presented) and to support the girl. Please see my reference to the executioner tweet mentioned above, and reference this tweet from this week that it’s about exposing corruption in Steubenville. (Lostutter lives in Winchester Kentucky which suprisingly has a higher crime rate than Steubenville who is currently experiencing rampant gang and drug violence) Warning the link to project knightsec has an ip logger and tracker embedded within the website. This recent tweet being all about uncovering corruption in the ville also contradicts Lostutter’s KY Anonymous farewell b4 he deleted his account in which that stated “it was time for Steubenville to handle the affairs themselves and support the victim.”
Back to January 5th, Lostutter Tweets that the FBi is ready to step in and investigate the rape. FALSE The FBI offered their assistance in helping Steubenville try and recover all the missing data from the cell phones as the FBI has bigger better toys to recover such things. Also, the FBI was helping in investigating in threats made against Sherrif Abadallah and his family, Chief Mcafferty and his family, this journalist’s threat as well as the hacking of the Parks website and a virus sent to Chief Mcafferty’s computer which shut it down. (Still no arrests in those threats or the computer virus.)
In this tweet Deric thanks @truthizsexy for her training and guidance of him in the anonymous collective. This statement from january is confusing as in his Gawker interview about the FBI raid, he tells reporter Adrian Chen that he just got drunk one night in September and made a KY anonymous account with his geotag on as from Winchester Kentucky. Also after watching the We are Legion Hacktivist story.
here Deric makes another false claim that the girl went to the hospital the night of rape. The girl went to the hospital days later. Not the night of the rape as she spent the night at Mark Cole’s house with Mays, Richmond and Cole.
These are several incinsistent and false statements made to rile people up. However witht he gruesome details of the case, all the misdirection probably wouldn’t have been necessary to garner support and attention to this case. Blogger Prinnie had already blogged for months about this case before Deric got involved prompting the New York times to break the story in the Main Stream field. Sadly though the Sandy Hook shootings buried the story as we as a nation mourned the loss of so many small children’s lives. I know this as the stor cross my desk when the times broke it prompting me to get curios and then fully involved days later.
So Deric/Ky/Shadowrapz whatever the heck he calls himself now disappeared for months after the second rally and reappears to announce to the world he’s back unmasked, and launching Project Knightsec. Days or maybe it was a week later he then announced he was raided by the FBI and asked for donations for his legal fund. (the fund raised over $59,000 to date minus 6k in refunds it bottomed out at $53,000) He then also began asking for personal donations to buy food and food for his dog. despite owning a motorcycle, truck, several firearms that could have been sold to aid himself being that he lives with his girlfriend on her family inherited farm property. He then began once again inserting himself as a media darling, this time as a victim and dedicated his website to posting more false, and inaccurate conspiracy theories about Steubenville, and the grand jury He also then after making $53,000 for legal funds, god knows how much in personal donations, then asked for more money to start his own business. shortly after “starting his own business” he announced no more personal or defense funds were needed, but has failed to pull his personal donation link from his website.
When he began raising money for himself, his “business” and his legal funds, KY made promises to the public via his “fan page” and his twitter that he would donate $10 to the free anons fund for every $100 raised. You can read his FB post here. To this date, Free Anons has NOT received one penny from Lostutter according to Bat Country Word who has several reliable sources within Free Anons.
And then there are these false accusations against a former Steubenville police officer taken from the Project Knight sec website:
“07/31/2013
The Steubenville Police officer whom was fired for serving alchahol to minors that threatened retaliation at wintersville PD for charging his son in underage drinking http://heraldstaronline.com/page/content.detail/id/588786/City-Police-patrolman-fired.html?nav=5010
https://www.facebook.com/greg.moray/friends
Rumor has it that the officer MORAY whom was fired was a teacher back in the early 90’s then got canned for allegedly sleeping with students”
A simple ten minutes of my time on the phone and writing 2 emails to the Ohio Board of Education, The Ohio Federation of teachers, proved that former officer Greg Moray was NEVER a teacher. In fact if these bs lies were true, he never would have been able to become a Steubenville Police Officer at the age of 23. Moray was terminated at the age of 42 from the force.
Lostutter’s lawyers appear to be having difficulties restraining their client from publicly speaking (making an ass out of himself) while he still has not yet been charged with federal charges. (charges which Lostutter now claim are Ohio/Steubenville Grand Jury charges and not federal. Despite federal warrants for his raids being issued and his own lawyer confirming to me that the charges are federal with federal time in play if convicted.) Lostutter also making this tweet on July 13, 2013 that he knows that no anons are being indicted via the grand jury (the same gj he claims is indicting him via tweets on my personal twitter. You can read this absurd statement from Lostutter here
Several other people have been raided by th FBI in conncetion to either tweeting or dming Lostutter. No other info on these raids are available at this time.
As of now, I have filed a FOIA request with the FBI and The State of Ohio as it pertains to Deric Lostutter and his legal woes and actions as I no longer find him to be credible any longer.
Standing up for a rape victim, and for what you believe is right and is a very noble thing. The initial intentions of #oprollredroll were very noble and even heroic, but one must ask themselves with all these intentional lies then and the ridiculous fundrasing, fame whoring, and even mentioning that “you’ll bring armed body guards and an army of journos once again to the ville to find a conspiracy that doesn’t exist as far as the evidence is concerned is no longer noble. It has taken away from this poor 16 year old and has now been replaced with ego stroking and attention seeking which has ruined #oprollredroll and their noble intentions for this girl.
This entire piece came about due to inconsistencies and contradictions made by Lostutter recently on Twitter. With the abscence of his lawyers contacting me back, I became suspicious and started looking back thru everything.
Several things are going to happen now: our site here may be ddos attacked like our friends over at Bat Country Word(read the article they raise alot of good questions too) when they called out KY, I’ll once again be called bought off by Steubenville, and/or a fed. all of which is easily disputed.
It’s never easy to call out someone whom you personally respected and trusted,especially when exposing something like this destroys something so wonderful that others were a part of. (I kept that secret mostly) but I do wish Lostutter the best of luck with his pending charges, if they ever come. But the man I once knew and even kind of respected, never existed. It’s a shame that this had to come from me, but maybe it’s better it came from me. I at least have the balls to admit when I am wrong, correct a gross error such as not seeing or calling this out in the beginning.
There’s alot of Bullshit on the Steubenville town side too, but I’m too tired to write it up at this moment. Readit either in my book, or if/when i decide to tackle it here.
follow me on twitter for more info as the Steubenville GJ progresses @nunyaman
before Deric/sabuwrapz/Ky accuses me of anything, yes I do accept donations to fund my work (as does every independent journalist across the country, as well as this website. )if you care to donate to my work you may do so here (in the year and a half i have been fundraising, I have only raised $600 all used for travel to cover stories, new gear, or notebooks for transcription of courtcases….every little bit helps)
Update 8/3/13 : It would seem Mr. Lostutter is throwing a bit of a tempter tantrum on the twitterverse regarding this article, and that he is incapable of reading the links in this piece to his own words, lies, contraditions and misinformation. Instead of actually answering the questions raised here,(and the questions i have been asking for over a week) it seems typical that Lostutter would cry to his following for spam blocks, personal attacks, to ignore the piece, and throw fits and spew more misinformation to try to distract from the truth of this article.
All the information contained in this piece is a matter of public record, came from Lostutter’s own mouth,or can be obtained by simply making phone calls, or writing emails to the appropriate person(s) or Outlet(s). Lostutter is ignoring my brief interview with a anon who used to work with him on previous #ops and that he is indeed a fraud. Suprising part is that he didn’t pull the usual I’m gonna have my lawyers sue you rubbish. most likely because he knows I’m right and that these facts speak for themselves.
Updated 8/5/13:
Lostutter after raising 53 thousand dollars in donations for legal funds regarding charges that haven’t come in over 4 months, around $200 to start up his own business, and countless dollars for personal use all from the public, Lostutter is at it again this time asking for more money due to being kicked out his girlfriend’s inherited farmland. You can read his facebook post here. What is Lostutter really really raising money for, and what has he been doing with the funnds already donated? The irony of this facebook post is that Lostutter began attacking this journalist for being homeless after this piece was published on Friday, and is now begging for help not to “become homeless again.”
you can also read avery funny and foul mouthed encylopedia dramatica entry on KY here:
