Gamer rejected Florida man’s Twitter flirtations — then he blackmailed her, feds say
A female gamer in Virginia was met with threats of violence and rape after she rejected romantic advances on Twitter from a man she had never met in person, according to federal prosecutors.
Now her accused blackmailer faces prison.
Agustin Alberto Lainez, 22, pleaded guilty to one count of cyberstalking after federal investigators said he spent weeks threatening to expose the woman’s identity and beat or rape her in direct messages on Twitter, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Virginia said Thursday in a news release.
Lainez could spend up to five years in prison and owe a $250,000 fine, according to prosecutors.
“This defendant used a keyboard to harass the victim in this case with remarkable cruelty, to the point of causing her panic attacks — all while trying to hide in the shadows of the internet,” Assistant United States Attorney Daniel P. Bubar said in the release.
Lainez met the woman, who lives near Charlottesville, Virginia, in an online gaming community last year, according to the criminal complaint. McClatchy News does not identify sexual abuse victims.
The pair reportedly became friends and began exchanging messages on Twitter.
But Lainez soon became “possessive,” a special agent with the FBI said in court filings. When he told the gamer he “liked her as more than a friend,” she reportedly responded by saying she didn’t feel the same way.
“Rejected romantically and believing that the victim was lying to him (as reflected in DMs), (Lainez) informed the victim that the only way he could ‘move on’ was if the victim had sexual intercourse with him,” the FBI agent said.
Roughly 15 minutes later, the complaint states Lainez sent another message asking for a video of her naked.
She declined, but Lainez reportedly continued to make demands while threatening to send a nude photo of her to other Twitter users, disclose her true identity and publicize secrets she had told him about other gamers in the community.
He later asked people on Twitter to “please beat her a-- next event y’all are at together” and sent the woman a screenshot of his iPhone Notes app where he had written her name, high school, city, university and phone number, according to the criminal complaint.
The gamer eventually relented and sent Lainez a video, but his threats of blackmail reportedly didn’t stop.
Lainez repeatedly called her a liar and a wh---, offered to pay people to beat her up and said he would rape her if she didn’t continue to communicate with him, the criminal complaint states. He openly referred to the demands as blackmail and extortion.
“Lowkey hate this and like it at the same time,” Lainez reportedly said in one Twitter message. “I just wish I didn’t have to literally blackmail you for you to tell me the truth and not be a wh--- lol.”
He also called her a cockroach, a compulsive liar and dumb, according to the complaint.
“As a result of his actions, the victim lived in constant fear, was subject to emotional distress, and suffered panic attacks,” prosecutors said in the news release.
Federal investigators tracked Lainez’s online identity to a physical address almost 800 miles away in Sanford, Florida —about 30 minutes north of Orlando.
He was arrested in April and initially denied bond.
Defense attorneys asked for his release citing concerns over COVID-19, but federal prosecutors said Lainez remained a danger to the victim and a judge denied the request. He is due to be sentenced Dec. 21, according to court filings.
This story was originally published September 11, 2020 at 1:02 PM with the headline "Gamer rejected Florida man’s Twitter flirtations — then he blackmailed her, feds say."
