A Michigan woman accused of engaging in a sophisticated catfishing campaign of harassment that targeted two teens — one her daughter — was charged with five crimes, including one that accused her of attempting to frame another student.
Kendra Gail Licari, 42, was charged Monday afternoon with two counts of stalking a minor, two counts of using a computer to commit a crime and one count of obstruction of justice. The obstruction charge alleges that Licari attempted to frame another minor for her actions during the investigation.
Licari was arrested Monday after an investigation that started with a report to officials with the Beal City Schools of a cyberbullying complaint involving Licari’s daughter and the boy she was seeing at the time. Licari’s daughter attends Beal City Schools.
At the time the complaint was made last December, Licari was also employed as a girls’ basketball coach at the school, said Beal City superintendent William Chilman. At the end of the season, Licari was asked to not return due to a coaching change.
Licari and the mother of the other student worked with school officials to figure out the source of the harassment, David Barberi, Isabella County Prosecutor, said Monday.
District officials quickly ran against the limits of their resources, Chilman said. Most of the incidents took place off school grounds and didn’t involve school devices. In mid-January, the district decided asked for assistance from law enforcement.
While law enforcement assistance was officially requested in January, family members said that the harassing messages started early in 2021, Barberi said.
Licari is accused of having used virtual private networks to mask the location she was sending messages from, Barberi said. When kids the age of the two traveled, she made it appear as if the messages were coming from the location they were at.
She also use a specific identity but instead tried to make them look like they were coming from age-peers of the two teens. That included using slang and abbreviations associated with communicating by text.
Barberi said on Monday that his office compiled 349 pages of harassing text and social media messages during the course of the investigation.
The investigation eventually exhausted local computer crime resources, and local law enforcement turned to the FBI’s computer crime division in mid-April, Barberi said.
Around the end of April/start of May, law enforcement notified Chilman they believed that Licari might be involved, Chilman said.
The FBI was finally able to lock down the IP addresses used to send the messages and realized they were Licari’s, Barberi said Monday.
When confronted, Licari reportedly made a full confession, Barberi said. What is unknown is why Licari would have done it.
Licari was released on a $5,000 bond following her Monday arraignment. Using a computer to commit a crime is a 10-year felony, stalking a minor and obstruction of justice are both five-year felonies.
Licari is scheduled for a Dec. 29 hearing to determine whether sufficient evidence exists to bind her over for trial.
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