(WWJ) A Michigan mother stands accused of catfishing her own daughter and her daughter's boyfriend, and harassing them online.
According to a police report cited by 9&10 News, investigators found that 42-year-old Kendra Gail Licari of Mount Pleasant cyberbullied her child, sending hundreds of harassing texts and social media messages over the course of about a year.
Licari, who worked as a girls' basketball coach at Beal City High School, is accused in a criminal complaint of using special software to create fake numbers, so the messages seemed to be coming from her daughter's classmates.
“When the case first came into our office, it was bizarre and almost hard to believe,” David Barberi, Isabella County’s prosecutor, told WKRC News.
The TV station reported the case started when the high school student complained to her parents that she was getting up to a dozen harassing messages a day, for months. The teen's mom then turned to the police for help to figure out who was behind it, and what they found was a shock.
With the help of the FBI, police were able to track down the IP address used to send the harassing messages and discovered that it belonged to Licari.
Barberi said there are over 1,000 pages of evidence that the mother was the culprit. “By and large it was mostly just harassing type text messages, demeaning, demoralizing, and just mean texts,” he said, adding that authorities may never know why she did it.
"Catfishing" is when a person poses as somebody online to deceive another person. Usually it's for romantic reason, making this a very unique case.
Licari is charged with two counts of stalking a minor, two counts of using a computer to commit a crime, and one count of obstruction of justice.
She was released in a $5,000 bond and is due back in court for a hearing on on Dec. 29.
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