Complaint Review: Karen Faye Pratt - Internet

I was also the victim of a multi-year scam that resulted in ongoing harasshment and terrorizing.  This was a deliberate scam.  "Karen Faye Pratt" lied from the very beginning about her real name, her phots, where she lived and her entire life history.  The scam involved multiple characters.  Central to this scam were three people (all fictitious identities):  1) Karen Faye Pratt (KFP), 2) Ai Tominaga, and 3) Lynn Motley.

About a year ago, a close friend of mine discovered photos that "Karen" had sent me of herself years ago.  She did a "google reverse image search" and immediately found out that the photos were in fact of this famous model named Sara Ziff.  I was beyond shocked.  Not only did we discover that "Karen Faye Pratt" - a woman I had been communicating with for years - was using fake photos but a further investigation revealed that "Karen" was also forging the email headers of her emails.  She and her accomplice "Ai Tominaga" essentially made their emails appear like they came from a specific company Karen pretended to work for at the time, when in reality they came from a Yahoo and Gmail email account.  A further analysis of the email headers showed that "Karen" and "Ai" had become careless with hiding their IP addresses.  Some of the emails showed that the real originating IP address was located in Elk Grove Village & Hoffman Estates in Chicago.  It took me months to try to make sense of these revelations.  You would have told me that "Karen" was in fact an alien and I think I would have been just as shocked.

"Karen Faye Pratt" (KFP) and I first met on an online dating website.  We quickly developped a connection and were communicating online for many weeks and months. A few weeks into our correspondence she introduced me to her friend "Ai Tominaga", who she said was Brazilian/Japanese.  KFP said she was an only child originally from London (Belgravia), but she said she was half Indian (on her mother's side) and a mix of European nationalities (on her father's side).  In speaking to her on the phone over the years I have every reason to believe that she is in fact Indian, given certain words pronunciations.  She had more of an international accent, but certainly had British tones and intonations.  This could simply be b/c she was educated in British schools in India and not necessarily b/c she is from the UK.  She claimed to go to NorthWestern University, obtaining both her bachelors and MBA.  She also claimed to work at Givenchy within the LVMH group.  When we first "met" online, she was sending emails from "[email protected]" (which investigators confirmed was a fake address - she was forging headers in order to make it appear like it came from that address).  Investigators also confirmed "Karen Faye Pratt" never attended NorthWestern University and never worked at Givenchy/LVMH.  KFP claimed to be a model as a teenager (which explained the photos she sent of Sara Ziff), but she claimed to be somewhat of a prodigy who was more interested in academics and intellectual pursuits.  She was certainly quite smart, well read, and knowledgeable.  She spoke many languages, including French and some Indian dialects.  We exchanged tons of photos – most of Karen Faye Pratt were of modeling (the photos I later found out were of Sara Ziff), which I of course liked but also thought odd that there weren’t as many candid shots. She shared candids as well, but they were fewer and far between. KFP had a very soft voice, which she said was the result of battling throat cancer in her early 20s. According to her, she had lost the ability to speak for some time, but had regained it over time albeit with a weakened voice. Though she seemed to be a high-energy person with a busy schedule, there was a fragility related to her health that always was at bay. This will come into play later.

Her friend "Ai Tominaga" claimed to be a colleague of hers at Givenchy (the email he used was [email protected]  He claimed to work at Givenchy as a fashion stylist. If you Google "Ai Tominaga" you will only find photos of another really famous Japanese supermodel. This is a crafty cover because it always explained why I could never find anything about Ai on google. It just seemed like this model was so famous that she dominated most results on Google search. "Ai Tominaga", according to their story, was a gay man of Japanese descent, but born in Brazil. He had a very funny way of speaking and writing that was quite endearing and would be difficult to fake. Over time, I became nearly equally close to Ai as I did to KFP.

In the beginning of our relationship there were always near misses with KFP when we were supposed to meet up. Mostly it was work, or travel related to work that would pull her out of the city or force her to cancel plans. In the beginning I didn't think much of it since we were both in our mid-20s and living in NYC - that stuff just happens. I also had a full time job, traveled a lot and was always on the go. However, it became an ongoing challenge and a series of near-misses. I now believe all of this was intended to create a sense of heightened emotion and wanting. Nonetheless we continued to communicate and grew much closer with time. This lasted over many months and I'd say we began to develop what seemed like real emotions for each other. More that we just really liked each other and were a bit exasperated that we hadn't been able to connect in person.

Maybe 4 months into this situation, another character, Lynn Motley, was introduced. I now believe that "Lynn" was introduced because they (Karen and Ai) had to find a way to keep me and Karen from ever meeting in person. Lynn apparently lived across the hall from KFP's former boyfriend Mark. Lynn - according to KFP - supposedly had a "single-white-female-ish"obsession with KFP. To cut to the end - and believe me I would have paid a million dollars to know this back then - KFP and Lynn are the same person. Lynn does not exist - Karen and I just used that fake character to do all their evil deeds and to make them appear like victims of Lynn as well. The story was very delicately woven and I can't exactly remember how Lynn came into the picture. First it seemed like Lynn had an obsession with KFP. Then Lynn turned more of her attention to me, threatening and terrorizing me online. For weeks and months Lynn would alternate between threatening the both of us – she served to bring me and KFP closer together at times, but also to tear us apart and create hurt between us. Lynn would constantly change email addresses and hide her IP addresses when threatening us, terrorizing us, and threatening to expose intimate photos I had taken for KFP to my employers and family. I was very close to hiring my own lawyers to deal with the situation when KFP’s father apparently did so.

I tried to insert myself in the case, but KFP insisted on taking care of it (I now realize that she didn't want me to go to the authorities because she was in fact behind all of this). One day, KFP called me and was so excited to tell me about a huge break her father's lawyers had. She told me that Lynn had finally been caught. According to Karen Faye Pratt, Lynn had not hidden her IP on one of her emails, which revealed where she worked (PWC). This eventually led to Lynn getting fired from PWC for violating company policy and also a court case that led to Lynn having to service jail time (according to KFP). I think this was said because they (ai and Karen) were afraid that I would finally report the online threats to the authorities. Of course, all this time, they had hacked into my computer so they knew exactly whenever I was looking for legal advice (which I had at that point).  

Maybe 6 months into this we still hadn't met, even though Lynn was finally out of the way. KFP had given me her address on the Upper East Side b/c I wanted to send her some flowers. They never made it there b/c she didn’t live there. When I confronted her on why she would give me a dummy address, it led to a big fight. At that point, I had had enough and I yelled at her, telling her how messed up it all was. KFP started to cry and apparently cried so hard that she supposedly damaged her vocal chords, which water-falled into a series of illnesses. This new phase is when the emotional component got kicked into high gear. KFP’s illness served a dual purpose: 1) it continued to prevent us from meeting, and 2) it created an overwhelming amount of guilt within me – since I was the cause of it – that kept me in this terrible situation b/c I just wanted to make it right at all costs. I know how messed up that sounds but these people were master manipulators. They made me feel responsible for ruining this girl’s life – this talented and desirable person was rendered to a hospital bed and in and out of serious illness. KFP even went as far as saying that she was so depressed and sad that she had cut her face with a razor, which I believed because who would make up stories like this?? KFP had left to London for treatment, so I was very far away from her. Eventually, she said she went to India to heal with family. It was at this time that I became much closer to Ai Tominaga and relied on him for information on how KFP was doing since she wasn’t always able to talk and was sometimes apparently in critical care at a hospital. It was also at this time that Ai convinced me to create intimate photos and videos of myself and share with KFP b/c it was the only thing that would make her feel connected to the real world since she was in a hospital bed and had no desire to live. I felt so guilty that I would do anything – even something so compromising – if it gave this girl a chance at wanting a normal life again. Ai Tominaga was even directing the videos, telling me "you should do this and say this on the video.. she will like it a lot".  Psycho Lynn would come back into the picture after she was supposedly out of serving time. Lynn would terrorize me and threaten to send these images and videos I had made for KFP (which she said she obtained by breaking in Karen's email) to my friends, family, and employers.  

One crucial piece of information - which we believe will lead to the real people behind this scam - is an address in Chicago where Karen received gifts.  Essentially, Karen gave me the address of her "family friend" in Chicago and told me that he would bring her the gifts to India since he was traveling there for work. The interesting part is that this "family friend" truly exists (it's the only person in this entire story that actually has a real name with a physical address in the US, a linkedin profile that is well established and a real job in the real world, etc). Moreover, the address where the gifts were sent matches the location of the IP address we found in some of the email headers sent by Karen. Also, gifts were sent to me from that address as well. Therefore, we know for a fact that someone at that address (which I still have in my records) is either in contact with Karen or Ai. Or perhaps even resides there. We believe Karen never was in India. She just pretended to be and wanted to receive the gifts so she made the mistake to give me her address - or the address of someone she knows - so she could retrieve the gifts easily. That address has the same owner today than it had them (the owner purchased it in 2003 and still resides there today). Ironically, the owner of the house actually works at PWC but we do not believe he is involved or that he knows anything about it.  We believe someone else who lives (or lived) at that address between 2004-2008 is involved OR that someone who resides there is very close to the individuas who committed these crimes.

This is a serious case of cyber bullying, terrorizing victims online, amassing personal videos/photos/information about them and later threatening them with that information to get something out of them. I was told by investigators that extortion/bullying/sextortion/internet fraud cases are taken very seriously so we reported the crimes with the help of lawyers and submitted the thousands of emails I still had, with all the "email headers" information attached to each email. It's also a serious crime when someone is impersonating companies like "LVMH, PWC, Ernest Young, etc" by forging email addresses. We currently have the cybercrime unit of the FBI investigating this crime since we found out there are many more victims and that many more personalities and identities (all with fake photos) were created along the way. Investigators believe these criminals have victimized several dozen men and women—many in NYC, London and Paris. We have not identified all of the victims yet.  Anyone who believes they may have been a victim in this case should contact the FBI.  If you are afraid for your safety, please post your experience with these individuals here and we will transfer it to investigators.

Karen's Facebook profile has been deleted about two weeks ago (she is now aware that we are investigating her) but her profile still remains on this link:  http://profileengine.com/people/59871042/karen.faye.pratt

This person is dangerous and needs to be placed behind bars. We have reasons to believe that this scam has turned into a ring involving many different individuals who scam people online asking them for sensitive photos and then threatening them to post them publicly if they don't send them money right away, often via western union. I hope this never happens to anyone else.  It is important to say that a criminal complaint contains allegations that a defendant has committed a crime.  It is important to say that every defendant is presumed to be innocent until and unless proven guilty in court.