DEA Agent Creates Fake Profile With Photos Pilfered From Woman’s Seized Phone

Although Facebook is part of a movement to use
real identities online—”Having two identities for yourself is an
example of a lack of integrity,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg
once said—there are at least 83 million fake profiles on
Facebook, by the company’s
own estimation. Like the old joke about the mathematician in
Scotland, we know at least one of those profiles is a federal
agent’s.

The Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) and one of its agents, Timothy
Sinnigen, have found themselves in court after Sinnigen pilfered
the seized photos of a woman named Sondra Prince and created a fake
profile to bust an alleged drug ring in New York City. Prince has
sued Sinnigen and the DEA and the case is in mediation. The
Washington Post
reports:

One matter that’s agreed upon by all parties: Sinnigen, who is
claiming qualified immunity from the suit, created the
profile and posed as her in contacts with at
least one fugitive connected to a DEA investigation.

“Sinnigen posted photographs from [Prince’s] phone, to
which he had been granted access, to the undercover Facebook page,”
an August court filing by the government states. “… Defendants
admit [Prince] did not give express permission for the use of the
photographs contained on her phone on an undercover Facebook page,
but state [that Prince] implicitly consented by granting access to
the information stored in her phone.”

Translation: All the pics were fair game. Even ones showing
Prince scantily dressed, which Sinnigen used in the fake profile.
“Defendants admit that in one photograph of [Prince] that was used
on the undercover Facebook page, [she] was wearing either a
two-piece bathing suit or a bra and underwear,” the filing
states.

The DEA believed Prince was a girlfriend of the alleged drug
ring’s leader and she pled guilty to one count of conspiracy to
possess with intent to distribute (that is a real charge in the war
on drugs). Sinnigen used his knowledge of her boyfriend and her to
impersonate her better. Other cops admit to using fake Facebook
profiles in their investigations, for things like
finding illegal punk shows, but the practice runs afoul of the
company’s policy.

Related:
In 2012 two Texas pre-teens were charged with online
impersonation for creating a fake Facebook profile of another
girl.