Two Northwest Arkansas men made hundreds of thousands of dollars deciphering private email passwords for clients, and some of the illegal hacking was done from a computer at the Crawford County Courthouse in Van Buren, according to an FBI affidavit.
Mark “Tony” Townsend of Cedarville and Josh Tabor of Prairie Grove conducted their business through a website called needapassword.com, according to the affidavit, which was unsealed Thursday.
The website, which is no longer active, included advertisements that read, “Is your spouse cheating with someone? Do you know who they are? You have the right to read the personal thoughts your spouse is writing to others,” according to the court document.
The affidavit was written by FBI Special Agent Nathan Doherty in support of search warrants. Doherty is assigned to the FBI’s field office in Los Angeles, which investigates computer and high-technology crimes.
The affidavit was filed Sept. 24 in U.S. District Court in Fayetteville, and a search warrant was executed the next day at Tabor’s residence in Prairie Grove. Several computers and other equipment were confiscated.
No charges had been filed against the men as of Friday. U.S. Attorney Conner Eldridge said he couldn’t comment about the case.
“Without referring to any particular case, it is generally the practice to keep search warrants under seal until charges are filed or a decision is made that no charges should be filed,” Eldridge said by email. “There are occasions, however, when this is not the case, as when the target is aware of the investigation and will not gain any advantage by having access to the information contained in the search warrant affidavit. … It is ultimately the court’s decision as to whether a search warrant remains under seal.”
According to the affidavit, the activity could fall under three criminal statutes: U.S.Code, Section 1030 (a)(2)(C), unauthorized access to obtain information; U.S. Code, Section 1030 (a)(4), unauthorized access in furtherance of fraud; and U.S. Code, Section 1343, wire fraud.
Townsend didn’t respond to an email message late Friday, and no contact information could be found for Tabor.
The investigation dates back to the spring, but it appears Townsend had been providing his services through needapassword.com since 2005, according to the affidavit. Tabor apparently became involved in 2010, and the two men opened a joint account at Arvest Bank that year.
Townsend and Tabor were employed by Apprentice Information Systems Inc. of Rogers, a company that has been providing information-technology services to county governments since 1988. Apprentice has been doing work for Crawford County since 2008, according to the affidavit.
According to the affidavit, Townsend used Crawford County government Internet services to conduct criminal activity.
“Townsend maintains a desk at the Crawford County courthouse, where he typically spends two days a week working,” according to thedocument.
Two computers were on Townsend’s desk - one that belonged to Apprentice Information Systems and one that was owned by the Crawford County Rural Fire Department No. 4, according to the affidavit. Townsend is assistant chief at that station, said Chief Andy Jones.
Jones said the Fire Department, in Cedarville, didn’t have Internet, so he let Townsend take a department computer to the courthouse to do fire reporting.
Also, Townsend also would take two laptop computers with him to work in the courthouse, the affidavit stated.
Randy Lamp, president of Apprentice Information Systems, said Townsend and Tabor no longer work there. Lamp wouldn’t say when the men left the company or whether the departure was voluntary.
“We were contacted by law enforcement, and the only thing that I’m in a position to say is that they told us they had looked at us and decided we had no part in this,” said Lamp, referring to Apprentice Information Systems. “None of our equipment or resources were used.”
On April 12, FBI Special Agent Jonathan Holmes reviewed needapassword.com, and a confidential source became a client of the website that day.
On May 14, Doherty submitted an affidavit for a search warrant in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles seeking more information about [email protected], the primary email address associated with needapassword.com. U.S. Magistrate Judge Jay Gandhi granted the search warrant.
On June 6 and July 24, FBI agents interviewed a woman who had hired needapassword.com to find out whether her boyfriend was unfaithful. She provided the FBI with two emails from sneakyone@needapassword. com, which instructed her to make a payment through the website Paypal and describe it as a “Donation to Mark Townsend.” On July 8, Paypal provided the FBI with records related to the account, which was registered to Mark Townsend.
“The customer service account received via Paypal approximately $150,000 from March 3, 2006, to August 1, 2007 …” according to the Doherty’s affidavit. “I believe that most of the payments received by the customer service account were sent by customers who had paid to gain access to others’ email accounts.”
On the basis of the investigation, from May 28, 2009, to July 11, 2013, needapassword.com received about $27,900 through Paypal. “The majority of the payments ranged from $45 to $200,” according to the affidavit.
Tabor’s computer was used to log in to the needapassword.com Paypal account 12 times from Dec. 31, 2012, to May 30, 2013, according to the affidavit.
A computer registered to the Crawford County Courthouse was used to access needapassword.com’s Paypal account 11 times from Dec. 11, 2012, to June 4, 2013.
A computer registered to the Crawford County Rural Fire Department was used to log in to the needapassword.com Paypal account three times from Oct. 10, 2012, to Oct. 23, 2012, according to the affidavit.
Crawford County Judge John Hall said he had no comment about the case.
“As far as the county is concerned, we are not allowed to comment on that,” he said.
Jones said Friday that he was unfamiliar with details of the case but that if a Fire Department computer had been used for illegal activity, that would be a problem.
The investigation by the Los Angeles FBI office is continuing, according to the affidavit.
The federal court case has been assigned to U.S. Magistrate Judge Erin Setser in Fayetteville.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 12/28/2013