Man Who Extorted, Raped Women He Met On Facebook Gets 10 Years In Prison

September 17, 2012 at 10:01 am by Morbid  

LIHUE, Hawaii  – It’s no secret that men will go through great lengths to get laid. Hell, even I’ve had to sit through a couple Matthew McConaughey flicks, all in the name of vagina.  But the elaborate steps one man in Hawaii took to sink the pink ended with him being convicted of sexual assault charges and getting himself a decade behind bars.

Back in 2010, 29-year-old Leonard Alpeche Jr. came up with a way to meet women for sex that was unbelievably convoluted and entirely illegal. He assumed the identity of a real 15-year-old girl and would use a fake Facebook account to promise women a lucrative career in modeling.

Claiming to be a model working for a local modeling agency, he would tell the women to contact an email address or phone number to sign up for a modeling contract. Surprisingly (or not), two women took the bait. Alpeche then used a series of email addresses, phone numbers, and Internet messaging services to assume the roles of various modeling agency employees, including a secretary, an agent, and a photographer.

Part of the audition process included the girls sending him bikini, semi-nude, and nude photos. Once he received them, Alpeche would demand face-to-face meetings with the  girls. If they did not comply, he threatened to release the revealing photos. In the first case he was charged with, involving a 21-year-old woman, he threatened to send the photos to specific friends, family and co-workers — all information he had retrieved from her Facebook account.

When the girl met Alpeche at a local park, he was wearing a mask and claimed he was a victim himself.  He told the woman that the modeling agency was part of an organized crime syndicate, and that if she did not allow him to photograph them engaged in a variety of sex acts, mobsters would harm him and his young son. After the sexual assault, the women went to police and a three month investigation began.

Police would eventually identify Alpeche, and in January 2011 he was charged with multiple counts of sexual assault and extortion. After the charges became public, the FBI contacted police regarding a similar case involving a minor they had already been investigating.

In that incident, the same modeling agency scam was employed and a minor had a total of $7500 extorted from her and was forced to perform sex acts on five separate occasions –all under the threat of having her revealing audition photos distributed to her family and friends. For reasons that I couldn’t find, one of the minor’s family members had recorded the serial numbers on some of the money paid to the suspect. Those bills would later be linked to money recovered during the investigation into Alpeche’s ballpark hookup.

Faced with overwhelming evidence of his guilt, Alpeche plead guilty to felony sexual assault and extortion on May 23. On September 12, he was sentenced to two, consecutive five-year sentences. He will also be required to undergo sex offender treatment, pay over $5,000 in restitution to the family of the minor, and will have to register as a sex offender for life.

Alpeche’s public defender called his client a bright man who is a model prisoner and has accepted responsibility for his actions.  Prosecuting Attorney Jake Delaplane echoed some of those sentiments, calling Alpeche ”dangerously intelligent” and making him that much more of a threat to the public.

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