Florida woman gets 2 years for cyberstalking

A Florida woman has been sentenced to nearly two years in federal prison for social media cyberstalking another woman and threatening to expose her past in adult films to her work and family.

According to the Department of Justice and court documents, 23-year-old Kassandra Caridad Cruz, of Miami, found a woman identified only as "S.B." on a porn website, figured out her real name, and sent her friend request on Facebook and Instagram in June 2015. Cruz pretended to be a Marine named Giovanni, apparently figuring that was the most likely person S.B. would befriend.

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S.B. accepted the requests and all was well until that September, when she noticed that Giovanni was "following" and "liking" (quotation marks are the DOJ's) her friends' posts as well. She thought that was weird, so she "blocked" and "unfollowed" Giovanni.

From here, things escalated quickly. According to court documents, Cruz began threatening to tell S.B.'s family and employer about her past work in pornography. She threatened to go to S.B.'s place of work and called S.B.'s parents. In emails and text messages that were easily traceable back to Cruz (she used the same phone number and email as her contact info for her college, where she was studying — wait for it — criminal justice), she told S.B. to pay her $100,000 to leave her alone. These demands were later lowered to $10,000 and sent via registered mail. This required Cruz to mail the letters from the post office, where she was seen on surveillance video.

There were also multiple threats of violence, which were usually not grammatically correct: "your gonna die b****"; "my cousin will deal with u"; "I want u dead b****"; "I will rip your insides out"; "IM NOT GOING TO STOP." From the beginning of 2016 until the end of April, S.B. received 900 calls and texts from Cruz. S.B. "remains in fear for her safety and the safety of her friends and family," court documents say.

For all of this, Cruz was convicted of one count of cyberstalking. Along with her 22-month prison sentence, she will serve three years of probation and must pay $2,178.32 in restitution and a $100 "special assessment." She'll probably have to drop out of of that criminal justice program, too.

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