Charles Rodrick, owner of a family of websites that publishes the names, photos and other personal information regarding registered citizens and sometimes members of their families, today lost a case filed against him in federal district court when the court entered a default judgment. The case alleged that Rodrick and others he controlled violated the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act by extorting money from individuals in order to have their personal information removed from those websites.
“This is a major victory for registered citizens in our nation,” stated attorney Janice Bellucci. “The court’s decision today to enter a default judgment in favor of the plaintiffs sends a clear signal to Mr. Rodrick and to others like him who break the law by illegally demanding funds from registered citizens.”
A total of 10 plaintiffs from 5 states challenged Rodrick’s actions in a lawsuit filed in Arizona federal district court in March 2013. The plaintiffs in the case are seeking termination of the websites at issue, payment for their damages, punitive damages as well as attorneys fees and court costs.
Rodrick was initially represented in the case by an attorney, however, his attorney withdrew in November 2013 reportedly due to Rodrick’s failure to pay legal bills. Subsequent to the withdrawal, Rodrick, who has a 10th grade education, filed legal documents he purported to have written that properly cited case law and the complex Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.
“The judge in this case wisely granted a motion filed by plaintiffs that required Rodrick to reveal who actually wrote and filed those documents,” stated Bellucci.
The websites owned by Rodrick include Online Detective, Offendex, SORarchives and SexOffenderRecord. According to court records, the Offendex website received revenues in excess of $30,000 per month.
This is great news. Only I wonder about other sites out there. I’m not on the state web site and am very concerned about this whole RSO mess/crime against humanity. My working life was brought to an abrupt halt because of Rodrick’s web site. I used to think it was because of the states site, but I was wrong and this is how I found out about Rodrick’s sites. It was the registering officer that made me aware of this one year when I was registering. The only good thing that came of this is this is how I stumbled across this web site and found CA-RSOL and all the great people I’ve met that are registered citizens.
I know there are allot of other sites out there and I came across this one being touted as a great site on Yahoo ( http://www.instantcheckmate.com/ ) but I’m so burned out on all the fear of being discovered and the loss of my work life, home, future, freedom, etc, that I just don’t want to look. I feel all background checking sites need to be considered illegal and if anyone wants to know anything about anyone they need to search the records themselves the old fashioned way. I still don’t know if all traces of me will ever be off of the web, and I’m unsure of any kind of a future. I hope to God this man gets prison time and is required to undo the damage he has done to all the people he harmed through his misguided business practices.
Charles Rodrick is a piece of trash. Anything that disrupts his life is a great thing. The Sex Offender Registries are all about disrupting people’s lives and harassing them so it is great when that is directed at any person that supports the SORs.
Interesting that he was forced to reveal who wrote and filed the court papers. Why is that important? Why does it matter who wrote them? Just wondering.
How come when this guy does it it’s a crime and when government does it it isn’t? They extort money from citizens who want to be removed also and a LOT more of it through legal costs! No one can just ask to be removed they have to pay to be removed off the government site too! They also extort money from registered citizens by making them pay fees to be on a registry under protest with the threat of prison if they don’t! Who REALLY is the extortionist in the whole bigger picture? This man Rodrick who the government just said this practice is illegal and sided with the victims? Or the government who he copied the practice from???
Have this guy been charged with criminal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) ?
In 2003 the US Supreme court said that the government could disseminate Doe’s information. Not really taking into full consideration all the effects that would have on HIS life. They considered it not to be punishment. Even though they never considered it form HIS standpoint because HE obviously did consider it to be so and HE alone was the one in this case who could say if it is or isn’t punishment to him! Also not considering the fact that historicly this practice had already been considered punishment and infact INHUMANE punishment that needed to be put to an end and never practiced again…
BUT they did make it clear in their desicion that DISSEMINATION OF INORMATION ALONE IS NOT INTENT OF PUNISHEMENT BUT IF PUNISHMENT WERE TO BE ADDED then the registry becomes what?? ILLEGAL! Excuse me – writing something into a penal code punishable with felony charges right there becomes what? ILLEGAL according to the US Supreme court! So the government law makers broke the law and don’t have to go to jail for knowingly doing what they were just told they can’t do? How’s that work? Oh yes – they are above the law unlike the rest of us…
Oh and there is NO ONE to hold them accountable for breaking the law either???
They create these registry laws illegally and then extort money from citizens illegally to be on it under threat of prison punishment and intentionally set them up for attack by other members of the public that they cannot deny they know they are doing because they actually put a warning on the site that using this info they are providing to harass or cause harm to these individuals in any way is a crime. With full knowledge that their actions associated with their government web site have cause many attacks and murders on citizens both on and off the registry. They have knowingly created a public hit list and joke about it! Where is the legal penalty for this action being enforced? NOWHERE!!!
Rodrick was only copying what the government was already doing. If they can do it why can’t he? Want to get off his website give him money and he’ll think about it. Want to get off the governments website give them LOTS MORE money and they’ll think about it. NOBODY’S getting off either for free though. Both extort money from citizens so both are identical but he can’t do it anymore and they can?? The government can break the law Rodrick can’t? At least Rodrick doesn’t lock citizens up in a jail for failing to comply with his illegal web site. WE all know if you got lots of money you don’t end up on the registry in the first place. So basically you can pay right up front and avoid the registry from that angle as an option.
Law makers get away with this extortion racket by claiming it protects the public. REGISTERED CITIZENS ARE THE PUBLIC! Did they forget that??? They are setting the members of the public up against each other by making a singled out group of citizens do something the rest are not required to do! Taking away their equal protection putting them deliberately in harms way and ruining the lives of these ,, forcing fear on everyone so that more money can be extorted from them on many levels to try to protect themselves from the dangers they are purposely being subjected to. Why are the lawmakers not jailed for breaking the law doing what they were told they could not do? If a judge makes a decision in a court who sees to it that it is carried out? That person is in a lot of trouble for not doing his job! A lot of judges are in a lot of trouble for going against what the Supreme court ruled. Who holds them up to the law? All involved in this scam need to be held accountable/jailed for ignoring a Supreme court ruling and inflicting endless harm and adding felony punishment to so called free american citizens! Intentionally causing the REGISTERED PUBLIC to be homeless, jobless, jailed, attacked, vandalized and murdered is against the law!
Here is a question – I didn’t read Rodrick’s case. How did they decide what he did was illegal? What exactly did they say about what made what he did illegal and can we now use it against what the government does? If It’s illegal for him to do it can’t be legal for the government to do! Who knows maybe this guy just turned out to be our best friend!
It’s always nice to see a bottom-feeder hit bottom!!!
I would really love to put up a website with Charles Rodrick’s photo, home address, vehicle, so that those who he extorted and abused could have it. Who knows what could happen…let him live in the same fear that he helped perpetuate AND PROFIT FROM on so many!
I’m hoping that we hear plenty about this in the news.
It sounds like this Rodrick person is in a whole a lot of trouble, hopefully he will be charged, tried and sent to prison for the lives that he has tried hard to destroy.
Does this mean that all other of those kinds of web sites will go down?
What can people do to help push this issue to the best end possible? There are a lot of issues about posting names on the web and not just with sites like Roderick had – and they all cost people jobs, security, and peace of mind.
KT
I actually had an issue from a website/arrested 19 years ago and offense expunged about 12-13 years ago. The site showed I had been convicted of what I was arrested for ? I was in shock /the plea was for a much lesser charge ? I was irate! I called the site and the man wouldn’t give me his name and refused to give me his supervisors name? He wouldn’t address the issue and the only way they would correct the mistake was if (I live in OC) went to LA, parked my car/fought traffic/waited in long lines and had someone from LA County fax them a copy ? I was pissed ! I’m still not aware if the issue has been addressed . I told him to call LA County and he refused?
Charles Rodrick (Chuck), also formally known as Charles Gilson seemingly destroyed my life. How? Easy. He placed incorrect or outright lies about me on his websites. He targeted me because i refused to give into his demands and i helped identify persons operating behind various mugshot extortion websites. When i lived in Nebraska and had to travel, the information he placed online about me caused others to question who i really was. In order to prove Charles Roderick was stalking me, i placed several online profiles about myself (that i controlled) online for the purposes of telling half truths. Over time, he used this information he found about me online, and placed much of it on his personal websites (I don’t consider them commercial sites because they are not legal entities, or are operating partially with legal names that are not currently legal). By writing about me on his websites, i’m considering moving forward with pressing charges against him for stalking, which is a registerable sex offense in California.
Unfortunately, when i was traveling out to California to bring a friend to see her parents before her mom passed away, my friends’ sister found my name on the internet and decided that i shouldn’t be anywhere near her parents and that i was a murderer as well as a child molester. Rodrick labeled me a murderer which placed people into panic. So when Karen, the individual who read roderick’s posts online saw that i was a murderer as well as a child molester, she decided to look into my online life and found my half truths or outright lies (bait accounts to catch my stalkers) and used that information of my date of travel.. as a tool to get law enforcement to start hunting me down. It caused a multi-state manhunt for me that almost ended in me going to jail.
You see, Karen, believed the online bait accounts as well as Rodricks’ posts on his almost official looking sex offender registry and thought that i was traveling when in reality i hadn’t even left yet. She started making calls, and then i was contacted by law enforcement as i was traveling.
I was told to register in California, or wherever i was at. The moment i did.. they considered it a “move without telling them before i moved.” which is the same thing to them as “absconding”.
So now when people search my name on Google, not only do they get the mugshot extortion site profile pages for me.. they also get my Nebraska website profile which is outdated and shows me as having absconded.
The good news is that i am now, in less than a year from this terrible mess, a homeowner in a big city. What is so beautiful about his attacks on me is that he may in fact soon not be able to own a home in his own name, thanks to how many millions he’s going to be forced to pay up. He will be constantly in a state of financial failures and now, finding investors will be next to impossible for this man.
He built his sleazy business model on hurting people. His aggressiveness in stalking me could easily place him on the sex offender registry.
I may in fact press charges him soon. I’ve got plenty of evidence on him for this.
Attorney General Tom Horne has declined to pursue criminal charges against Rodrick or anyone else involved in this insidious operation, despite a multitude of easily-provable harassment and physical threats made against registrants. This is most probably why Rodrick acted the way he did in his disdain of the civil court system in general. But more importantly, it shows that registrants will not be represented in any action that involves their own safety by law enforcement in Arizona.
As of this posting, February 19th, the sex offender sites are still up. My conviction was appealed, withdrawn and dismissed back in ’07, and have not registered since, yet he has my information AND photo on this vile sex offender site.
What is it going to take to make this guy stop for good?
I noticed that all of the sex offenders claims in the federal case were completely tossed out. What is up with that?
Yes all of the sex offenders claims in the federal case were thrown out. This is a great disappointment for all of us involved. But with this said please believe me when I say it is not over yet. We have had to be very patient and will continue to be patient while we work on this terrible situation. You can catch updates on http://www.offendextortion.com. This has been going on for quite sometime now and I can understand everybody’s frustration but this truly is a game of patience. Don’t lose hope because of this latest development as we have other tricks up our sleeves.
Thank you.
Patience? Its over according to the Federal Judge. I do not see a way to recover from a complete dismissal.
Another shameless hyena website is Homefacts.com
Can anyone explain why as part of the settlement that the website was not shut down? I just a job offer because I am posted on this jackasses website. I went through 5 interviews, passed a credit check a background check, received, signed and returned an offer letter, then boom they found his website. There I am, despite the fact that I am not a publicly registered sex offender in any state. I was immediately told, they could not hire me based on finding his website, one other reason!!! Now I am screwed.