Man Allegedly Impersonated His Ex in Catfishing Revenge-Porn Case

A Michigan man who stands accused of impersonating his ex-girlfriend and selling intimate photos and videos of her online has been ordered to pay $25,000. 

A judge has ordered Bradley Roy Clark to hand over the money after the ex-girlfriend accused Clark of creating Instagram and Patreon accounts where he impersonated her and sold the intimate photos and footage. The Patreon had more than 600 subscribers, according to a Thursday press release by the woman’s lawyer, and they could pay monthly fees of $4, $6, or $9 to see photos of the woman, per a complaint in the case.

“Only $9 gives you access to everything. Dozens of pics and screenshots plus all my exclusive private videos,” read the catfishing Patreon account, according to the press release.

“She was humiliated by the ordeal,” the woman’s lawyer, Kyle Bristow, told a local Fox News affiliate of the woman. “Someone has to be horribly vicious and to have no qualms with hurting someone they previously loved.”

Under the terms of the judgment, Clark must destroy all photos and footage of the woman that shows her “in a partial or full state of nudity and/or engaged in sexual activity.”  

Clark is also currently facing criminal charges, including six counts of intentional dissemination of sexually explicit visual material and three counts of using a computer to commit a crime.

VICE News was unable to immediately contact Clark, but he told the Fox News affiliate that he didn’t publish the photos. When called by VICE News, an attorney who represents Clark said he had no comment, does not do interviews, and hung up.

Over the last decade or so, the practice of posting someone’s intimate photos to the internet without their consent has become so common that it’s now just called “revenge porn.” States have started to craft a constellation of laws to punish people who engage in it, but since the internet stretches across state and country borders, it can be deeply difficult to locate perpetrators and hold them accountable. And once revenge porn has been published online, it’s nearly impossible to scrub them from the internet. 

With the advent of deep fakes, revenge porn is likely to only become more ubiquitous—and insidious. Earlier this week, a Florida state senate committee debated over a bill that would penalize people for posting photos that have been altered to be pornographic led one victim of the practice to accuse a senator of “victim shaming.” 

At the committee meeting, Hallandale Beach City Commissioner Sabrina Javellana shared her experience of being victimized by deep fake pornographic images. In response, Republican Sen. Ileana Garcia suggested that sometimes this “situation” is caused by “our journey for validation.”

“I think that the responsibility starts with us, with you, and the content that you put out there,” Garcia said, according to the Tampa Bay Times. “We expose too much of ourselves sometimes.”

“It did not make any sense,” Javellana told the outlet. “It was like victim shaming.”

The committee ultimately unanimously passed the bill.