Feds: Great Neck man charged in Internet extortion, cyberstalking

A Great Neck man was arrested Tuesday by FBI agents on charges of attempting to extort nude or compromising pictures of women, including high school and college classmates or others he knew from the Great Neck area, according to court documents and officials.

Adam Savader, 21, was charged with Internet extortion and cyberstalking involving 15 women between last May and February 2013, the court documents and officials say.

The case originated in Michigan based on a complaint from an unidentified woman from Great Neck attending college there, court papers said.

At a hearing in federal District Court in Central Islip, Magistrate Arlene Lindsay declined to release Savader on bail so he could travel with his lawyer to federal court in Michigan for arraignment on the charges. Savader was not required to enter a plea.

Lindsay said, because of Savader's Internet sophistication, he was a danger to the community. But she said she was willing to allow his lawyer, Michael Soshnick of Mineola, to propose a way to ensure his client would not try to contact other women or tamper with prior records of his contacts with victims.

Lindsay acted after Eastern District federal prosecutor Allen Bode said agents had found 19 files on Savader's cellphone involving women, only some of which were of the known victims.

Soshnick said Savader had dropped out of college to work full time on the Gingrich for President campaign and then for the Paul Ryan vice presidential bids.

Spokesmen for Gingrich and Ryan did not immediately return calls for comment.

The initial complainant said that someone had gotten into her computer and found "naked photos of herself" that she had never sent to anyone. A person who identified himself as "John Smith" threatened to send the pictures to her parents and others unless she sent him other naked pictures of herself, court papers say.

An investigation revealed that Savader was "John Smith" and that he had apparently used elaborate online schemes or hacked into computers of more than a dozen other victims, according to court papers.

In some cases Savader did not ask the victims for new nude pictures, but rather asked for him to be accepted as a "Facebook friend" or just to start texting with him.