A former NASA contractor threatened seven women by saying he would keep off the internet personal nude photos he had hacked from their computers — if they met his demand to email him new, explicit photos, a federal indictment claims.
Richard Gregory Bauer, 28, of Los Angeles, had downloaded nude photos of six of the seven women he stalked and sent them attached to emails that threatened publication, authorities said.
Writing under an alias, he told the women he would keep the hacked pictures off the web — if they took more pictures of themselves undressed and sent those to him.
In some emails, he detailed in list fashion what he wanted the photos to show — “you do this and your nude photos stay private,” he told one woman, according to the indictment.
“i would hate for these to get out somewhere…so when can i get a new one? i have mannnnnny more,” the indictment filed in Los Angeles federal court claimed Bauer wrote to one of women in an email that included a topless picture of her.
Bauer was arrested Wednesday at his residence by special agents with NASA’s office of the Inspector General. His aliases included “Steve Smith,” “John Smith,” and “Garret” the government said.
Bauer is charged in a 14-count indictment with stalking, unauthorized access to a protected computer, and aggravated identity theft over several years, with some of the contacts starting in early 2015 and the email threats continuing into this year.
His arraignment was scheduled for Wednesday afternoon in downtown Los Angeles, the government said. The court docket for his case did not identify a defense attorney. If convicted as charged, Bauer faces a possible maximum sentence of 64 years in federal prison.
Bauer was a contractor at the NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center, located inside Edwards Air Force Base in the Mojave Desert, and his previous homes were in Palmdale and Lancaster, the U.S. Attorney’s Los Angeles office said.
Bauer did contact some of the victims first by using his real name,when he sent them a questionnaire as a project for a “human societies class” he claimed he was taking, prosecutors said.
The indictment said that was a ploy to get information to reset online passwords, such as the name of a first pet, or the city where a victim’s parents first met.
In a couple of cases he also asked victims to help him test some software he had sent them; but the women were actually installing malware that would allow him to hack their computers, the indictment said.
The court papers did not identify the victims or say why Bauer chose to contact them. “this is not a joke” was a frequent message to them in his emails.
For one of the victims, Bauer downloaded a database file that contained 178,889 text messages, the indictment said, and he emailed to her topless pictures and an explicit photo he found in her files as part of his demand to get new pictures from her.
“Now what would your fiance think or your students think if these were made public?” he wrote, the indictment said.
Bauer sent another victim a email that demanded, “i want four pictures of you daily,” and described what he wanted in return for not publishing photos he already had, the indictment said.
He told that victim if she did not comply, “you are about to become one of the more popular girls on 4chan.”
The language of the indictment indicates some of the victims made efforts to evade Bauer, which appeared to be futile.
One woman got a message saying, “if you think changing your email address will protect you, you’re wrong.” Another was told, “getting rid of fb isn’t the answer.”
The indictment did not say if Bauer ever actually followed through with his threats or claims about publishing the photos, or if anyone sent the ones he demanded.
The investigation is continuing, and NASA’s Office of Inspector General asked anyone who may have knowledge of the case or believe they may be a victim of Bauer to contact NASA OIG Special Agent Joseph Bennett at (818) 354-9768.
