Denver Nuggets Chris Andersens house searched by FBI for child pornography (UPDATE: Chris Andersen was double-catfished!)

DENVER -- Denver Nuggets reserve center Chris "Birdman" Andersen has been excused indefinitely from all team-related activities after Douglas County sheriff's deputies searched his home Thursday as part of an investigation by the department's Internet Crimes Against Children unit.

Therefore, Andersen won't be on the bench when the Nuggets face the Los Angeles Lakers in Game 6 of their playoff series Thursday night.

The team issued a statement saying Andersen has been "excused from all team-related activities indefinitely as he deals with the reported investigation" and declined further comment.

The 10th-year pro hasn't played in the postseason after averaging 5.3 points and 4.6 rebounds during the regular season.

Sheriff's spokesman Ron Hanavan confirmed that the search took place Thursday. Andersen has not been arrested and Hanavan said no arrest warrant has been issued.

The department began investigating Andersen in February after receiving information from a law enforcement agency in California. Hanavan declined to release details, including the nature of any pending charges, citing an ongoing investigation. He said they're asking that the case be sealed.

Andersen answered the door at his Larkspur, Colo., home, about 40 miles south of Denver, and let deputies in, said Deborah Sherman, another sheriff's spokesperson.

"He did cooperate. He spoke with deputies," Sherman said.

The unit involved in the Andersen case investigates child porn, Internet luring, child predators and child pornography.

The sheriff's office said it recovered property from Andersen's home that investigators believe is connected with the case. Sherman said items typically seized by the unit include computers, hard drives, and thumb drives, though she said she could not provide details on what items were seized from Andersen's home, citing the ongoing investigation.

An arrest is not imminent, Sherman said, saying that it typically takes several weeks to a month for investigators to collect evidence from the seized items.

Deputies requested that the search warrant application filed in court be sealed because of the ongoing investigation.

Mark Bryant, who serves as Andersen's agent and attorney, said: "At this time, I respect the process and I have no further comment to protect the integrity of everyone involved. We'll proceed from there."

A message left at Andersen's home wasn't immediately returned Thursday to The Associated Press.

Andersen is in his 10th year in the NBA and his seventh season in Denver, although his playing time dropped dramatically this season as young players gobbled up more minutes.

Andersen has a history of helping out children's charities during his time in Denver and New Orleans, where he played from 2004 to 2008. According to the Nuggets' media guide, Andersen raised money for Mount Saint Vincent, a home for troubled and abused children, and was honored at the home's 2009 Silver Bell Ball. He's also involved with Alliance for Choice in Education, which provides scholarships for low-income families to use in private schools.

His middle name is Claus, and he dressed up as Santa to raise money for ACE in 2009, according to his media guide bio. He also helped with hunger initiatives while with the Hornets.

With his colorful tattoos and high-flying, shot-blocking act, Andersen has long been a favorite with the fans in the Mile High City.

Andersen began his career in Denver in 2001, before bolting to New Orleans three seasons later. He had a breakout season with the Hornets in 2004-05, only to have his career derailed by drugs. He was kicked out of the NBA on Jan. 27, 2006, for violating the league's drug policy.

Following a ban that lasted more than two years, Andersen returned to New Orleans late in 2008, playing in five games and blocking four shots.

Andersen then rejoined Denver for the 2008-09 season, providing a spark off the bench and swatting 175 shots in the regular season. His play around the rim helped the Nuggets make a run to the Western Conference finals, where they fell to the Lakers in six games.

Andersen parlayed that big season into a five-year deal he signed with Denver in July 2009.


This guy needs some serious help. First with the drugs and now the child porn. The guy must have some serious demons in the closet.

The lack of a statement doesn't look very good. I mean this is about as bad as it gets, and if you didn't do it I would expect you or your agent to at least say that you are "maintaining your innocence of these charges", not that "you're going to respect the process"... to me it reeks of him plea bargaining and giving up everyone else involved. The fact that he is gone from the Nuggets is also a bit telling.

I really liked his story over the past few years and I'm hoping these charges turn out to be false, but I wouldn't bet on it based on that story Bootsy posted.

Ugh. A blight on the otherwise fantastic story of the Nuggets, who were forced to deal shitbox Carmelo Anthony and have been better ever since. A fantastic example of Bill Simmons' 'Ewing Theory', when a team inexplicably plays better in the absence of their best guy.

Nuggets currently up 18 on the Lakers in the 4th quarter of game 6, keeping my ML bet alive after I thoguht it was long gone..

Nuggets center Chris "Birdman" Andersen may be extortion target

A lawyer for Nuggets center Chris Andersen today provided a statement to The Denver Post that gives a glimpse into the complicated case involving the player's home being searched by sheriff's deputies investigating Internet crimes against children.

Douglas County investigators on Thursday went to Andersen's home in Larkspur and seized property. Andersen, 33, has not been arrested or charged with a crime.

In the statement, Colin Bresee, an attorney for Andersen, suggested that a woman from California tried to get items of value from Andersen. The statement reads:

"A female fan in 2010 mailed Mr. Andersen multiple letters and included several photos in which she was scantily clad. Chris and this woman communicated with each other and in 2011, this woman, who represented herself as 21 years of age, flew to Colorado, showing her required identification. After leaving Colorado, she became upset at his lack of interest. In 2012, she threatened to retaliate if he did not provide financial remuneration. "

According to the statement, someone purporting to be the woman's mother wrote in an email that " 'i (sic) want him to pay for everything on her Amazon wish list, 5K for her bedding stuff and her victoria secret wish list."

"Professional athletes are routinely targeted by these types of individuals," the statement said. "The media has been speculating that he's a suspect and not a victim in a criminal investigation. Mr. Andersen has been fully cooperative with the authorities. The investigation is expected to take three weeks. We're confident it will show that Chris did not engage in any criminal conduct."

Thursday afternoon, the Nuggets said Andersen had been "excused indefinitely" from team activities while Douglas County sheriff's detectives investigate.

Andersen has been under investigation since February, when a California law enforcement agency tipped off Douglas County.

http://www.denverpost.com/breakingne...#ixzz1ubCxFmr3

He's a freak and a weird dude so this is not surprising one bit.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by The PHA

Nuggets center Chris "Birdman" Andersen may be extortion target

A lawyer for Nuggets center Chris Andersen today provided a statement to The Denver Post that gives a glimpse into the complicated case involving the player's home being searched by sheriff's deputies investigating Internet crimes against children.

Douglas County investigators on Thursday went to Andersen's home in Larkspur and seized property. Andersen, 33, has not been arrested or charged with a crime.

In the statement, Colin Bresee, an attorney for Andersen, suggested that a woman from California tried to get items of value from Andersen. The statement reads:

"A female fan in 2010 mailed Mr. Andersen multiple letters and included several photos in which she was scantily clad. Chris and this woman communicated with each other and in 2011, this woman, who represented herself as 21 years of age, flew to Colorado, showing her required identification. After leaving Colorado, she became upset at his lack of interest. In 2012, she threatened to retaliate if he did not provide financial remuneration. "

According to the statement, someone purporting to be the woman's mother wrote in an email that " 'i (sic) want him to pay for everything on her Amazon wish list, 5K for her bedding stuff and her victoria secret wish list."

"Professional athletes are routinely targeted by these types of individuals," the statement said. "The media has been speculating that he's a suspect and not a victim in a criminal investigation. Mr. Andersen has been fully cooperative with the authorities. The investigation is expected to take three weeks. We're confident it will show that Chris did not engage in any criminal conduct."

Thursday afternoon, the Nuggets said Andersen had been "excused indefinitely" from team activities while Douglas County sheriff's detectives investigate.

Andersen has been under investigation since February, when a California law enforcement agency tipped off Douglas County.

http://www.denverpost.com/breakingne...#ixzz1ubCxFmr3

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Man I hope this is true

Sources familiar with the investigation of Denver Nuggets player Chris "Birdman" Andersen told CALL7 Investigator John Ferrugia Friday that the case involves Andersen's alleged relationship with a 17-year-old girl and the possibility that he shared photographs of her via the Internet.

Source: ESPN Comments

http://espn.go.com/nba/conversations...sen-take-weeks

So I just got around to reading the more recent developments with this, and it's really an amazing story.

Simply put, while Chris Andersen did have sex with a 17-year-old, he did not commit any crimes. The crimes were committed by a 29-year-old woman in Manitoba, who was not only "catfishing' Andersen, she was DOUBLE catfishing both him and the other victim.

It all started when a 17-year-old fan sent messages to Chris Andersen on Facebook. Andersen, who was attracted to her, responded. At this point, no nude photos had been sent between the two, and they were just exchanging regular messages.

What neither Chris Andersen nor the 17-year-old girl realized at the time was that both of their accounts were compromised by a really weird 29-year-old Canaidan girl named Shelly Lynn Chartier.

It is not clear what initially motivated Chartier to hack Andersen's account. She had done so prior to his conversations with the 17-year-old. Given that she had access to it without shutting out Andersen, I am surmising that she phished his password in some way, as any other form of hacking (such as a password reset) would have prevented Andersen from continuing to access it. While it's possible she guessed his password, I believe it had to be phishing, given the number of other accounts you'll later read about her accessing.

Once Chartier had access to Andersen's account, she was pretty much eavesdropping on all of his Facebook messages, by simply going into them and reading the correspondences. When she discovered the one with the 17-year-old, she realized that she had struck gold.

Chartier then also hacked/phished the password of the 17-year-old's account, also leaving the password the same to where the girl still had access.

From this point, Chartier somehow took over most of the conversations on both sides! She wrote messages to Andersen as the 17-year-old, and as the 17-year-old to Andersen! In these correspondences, she made each believe they were really talking to the other, and arranged both nude picture exchanges and a real-life meeting in Denver!

Read that again.

Somehow Chartier was acting as BOTH parties, and making BOTH people believe that they were really talking to the other.

I have been trying to figure out how she could have pulled this off without either of the two noticing messages they didn't send in their conversation histories.

I am guessing that Chartier accomplished this by deleting the individual messages she sent from each account after she was finished, so only the recipients would see them in their history, while the "sender" would not. This way, Chris wouldn't see the messages he sent and say, "Hey, I didn't write that!", nor would the 17-year-old. I don't know if this is what Chartier did, but it makes the most sense.

So in reality, neither the 17-year-old nor Chris were really talking to each other much anymore, but both thought they were.

The 17-year-old then flew to Denver, and presumably had sex with Andersen. The legal age of consent in Colorado is 17, so Andersen did not commit any crimes by doing this. It is not clear whether he knew she was 17, as there are conflicting stories about the matter.

After the Denver meetup was over, Chartier upped the mischief to include extortion and threats.

Chartier hacked/phished Andersen's e-mail, and sent the nudes of the 17-year-old back to her. She demanded more explicit photos from the girl, in various sexual poses, with the threat of posting the nudes online if she didn't comply. Again, these threats were being written as Andersen using his e-mail, so the teen believed he was really threatening her. Why wouldn't she?

At the same time, Chartier sent e-mail to Andersen from a phony account claiming to be the 17-year-old's mother. The "mother" was threatening to ruin Andersen's NBA career unless he complied. She wrote this:

Quote:

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You better wise up.

I know what you did, and here's what I want.

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Eventually she was directed to Andersen's lawyer, Mark Bryant, who negotiated with her. One line in the fake mother's e-mail was:

Quote:

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I want him to pay for everything on her Amazon wishlist and 5k for her bedding stuff and her victoria secret wishlist

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At first Bryant refused the request, but Chartier upped the stakes by claiming aggressive, high-profile attorney Gloria Allred was about to take the case. While Bryant had his doubts about this, he suggested to Andersen that it was potentially going to get out of hand, and that they should consider settling in some way.

Eventually Bryant negotiated it down to "a nominal amount", with the agreement that both Andersen and the teen would destroy the pictures. The money was then sent to an unknown location.

It is not clear where the money was sent, or what happened to it. I am guessing that Chartier either received it, or perhaps she engineered some other sucker on the internet to receive it for her in some way. The 17-year-old girl did not appear to receive any money, and it's not clear who the Amazon wishlist actually belonged to.

At the same time, the 17-year-old got scared enough to where she reported the matter to the police. The FBI determined that this qualified as a child pornography violation, as Andersen had received nude pictures of a girl under 18, and now seemed to be demanding more in increasingly sexual poses. He seemed to be using threats to get this accomplished, so they took it seriously, and raided his house as described earlier in this thread.

The raid occurred in May, 2012, as the Nuggets (Andersen's team at the time) were playing the Lakers in the postseason. Andersen was suspended, and eventually released. They decided that there was enough evidence against him to where they wanted nothing to do with the guy anymore.

The FBI was at first very confused about the situation, as Andersen's computer did not show evidence of these threatening messages being sent, and the IP address sending the messages did not lead to him. Soon they put it together that this was being orchestrated by a third-party in Manitoba, Canada.

After the charges were dropped, the Miami Heat eventually signed Andersen, and he became a surprising force in the 2013 postseason, with the Heat eventually winning the championship. Andersen was now a fan favorite in Miami, and had gone from a middling Denver team to the best squad in the NBA -- all "thanks" to the actions of Chartier.

So who is Shelly Lynn Chartier?

According to Mark Bryant, she "apparently hasn’t left the house in several years, lives with her mother, and has some kind of computer gamer habit problem."

She lives in Easterville, Manitoba, a tiny fishing community with fewer than 100 residents, almost all of whom are aboriginal people. It is assumed that Chartier is also aboriginal.

So a 29-year-old woman who hasn't left the house in YEARS was able to completely uproot (and almost ruin) the life of an NBA player, all from her computer in her mom's spare bedroom.

I cannot find any pictures of Shelly Lynn, but without even seeing her, I think it's safe to say that Sports Illustrated likely won't be calling her to pose in their next swimsuit issue.

Wow.

When the whole situation was explained to Andersen, complete with charts and a timeline, it was so complicated that he still didn't understand it.

Here are two pretty good articles about the situation, though both have a few details incorrect:

http://www.thestar.com/sports/basket...catfished.html

http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/09...ortion-scheme/

I was also able to track down Shelly Lynn's mom's Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/delia.chartier

None of mom Delia's 1300+ pictures contain Shelly, which she either deleted after the high-profile arrest, or perhaps never took in the first place, due to her daughter's obvious problems.

sign up Chartier to fix Obamcare many foreign workers without security background checks already have access to ACA applicants personal information

BUMP

This was from October 2015, but it's closure to the story, and it gives even more details than I posted.

I assumed the culprit here would be obese, but it turns out that she was the opposite, described as "tiny".



http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/loc...332584592.html

BUMP

So a special on this aired on 20/20 last night and WOW this shit is crazy as fuck. You should be able to watch at the link below but might have to turn adblock off to view it first (no worries it's abc not some other bullshit website)

http://abc.go.com/shows/2020/episode...king-a-Catfish

So anyone who watches do you think the person who gets punished gets a strong enough one or deserves more?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by BeerAndPoker

BUMP

So a special on this aired on 20/20 last night and WOW this shit is crazy as fuck. You should be able to watch at the link below but might have to turn adblock off to view it first (no worries it's abc not some other bullshit website)

http://abc.go.com/shows/2020/episode...king-a-Catfish

So anyone who watches do you think the person who gets punished gets a strong enough one or deserves more?

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PK_ZpibEDD4

Quote:

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Originally Posted by BeerAndPoker

BUMP

So a special on this aired on 20/20 last night and WOW this shit is crazy as fuck. You should be able to watch at the link below but might have to turn adblock off to view it first (no worries it's abc not some other bullshit website)

http://abc.go.com/shows/2020/episode...king-a-Catfish

So anyone who watches do you think the person who gets punished gets a strong enough one or deserves more?

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On a plane right now and can't watch it, but definitely will later.

I was very fascinated with this story -- so much that I considered writing a TV movie script about it (don't laugh), because I think this story would be an excellent candidate for one.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Kuntmissioner

Quote:

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Originally Posted by BeerAndPoker

BUMP

So a special on this aired on 20/20 last night and WOW this shit is crazy as fuck. You should be able to watch at the link below but might have to turn adblock off to view it first (no worries it's abc not some other bullshit website)

http://abc.go.com/shows/2020/episode...king-a-Catfish

So anyone who watches do you think the person who gets punished gets a strong enough one or deserves more?

---

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PK_ZpibEDD4

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When did Michelle Obama become a reporter?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by BeerAndPoker

BUMP

So a special on this aired on 20/20 last night and WOW this shit is crazy as fuck. You should be able to watch at the link below but might have to turn adblock off to view it first (no worries it's abc not some other bullshit website)

http://abc.go.com/shows/2020/episode...king-a-Catfish
[B]
So anyone who watches do you think the person who gets punished gets a strong enough one or deserves more?

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I think the prison time was probably sufficient under the facts of this specific case, though I think a perma-ban from the internet would be warranted if it were possible and enforceable.

Interesting post-scripts to this story. Birdman went on to win at least one title with LeBron in Miami. I can't remember if he hooked up again with LeBron in Cleveland. Paris Dunn, the 17 year old victim, subsequently claimed to have became engaged to 71 year old Don McClean (American Pie/Vincent) according to her and their vacation pics after he separated from his long time wife.

Chris Andersen DID have sex with the underage girl in this story, but she was 17 at the time, which was legal in Colorado where it took place.

What surprised me was that he didn't run into legal hot water because of the internet's involvement in the situation.

I always thought that 18 was the magic number where the internet was involved. That is, even if sex with 17-year-olds is legal in the state where the minor resides, if you use the internet to meet and arrange a sexual encounter with the minor, then you're committing a crime.

Or so I thought.

Or maybe it was technically illegal, but it wasn't a major enough point to prosecute Andersen, especially given that he was mostly a victim in this whole situation.