A woman from Michigan has been charged with a felony after she allegedly catfished and cyberbullied her own teen daughter for a whole year.
This week, Kendra Gail Licari of Mt. Pleasant, Michigan, was charged after a year-long investigation that started when Beal City Schools got a cyberbullying complaint.
The people being harassed were Licari’s daughter and the boy she was dating at the time, so Licari worked with the boy’s mother and school officials to find out who might be doing it.
Isabella County Prosecutor David Barberi said the messages started in early 2021, even though the complaint didn’t come in until December when Licari was working as a girls’ basketball coach at her daughter’s school.
The incidents didn’t happen on school grounds or with school equipment, and it didn’t take long for district officials to run out of ways to find out who did it.
In January 2021, the district asked for help from law enforcement. By April of that year, the FBI’s computer crime division was also involved.
The federal agency was able to lock down the IP addresses used to send the messages and found that they were linked to Licari.
Barberi said that the mother is accused of hiding her location by using virtual private networks (VPNs) and making it look like the messages came from places where other teenagers were.
She tried to make it look like the messages came from another teenager by using slang and abbreviations. The office of the prosecutor put together 349 pages of harassing text messages and posts on social media.
After she was found, Licari was asked about what she had done, and she reportedly told the whole truth. But it’s still not clear why she went after her daughter.
The 42-year-old mother was charged with two counts of stalking a minor, two counts of using a computer to commit a crime, and one count of obstructing justice. The second charge says that the mother tried to put the blame for her actions on another child while the investigation was going on.
After the arraignment, Licari was given a $5,000 bond and let go. Using a computer to commit a crime is a 10-year felony, and stalking a minor and obstructing justice are both 5-year felonies. She could spend years in prison if she is found guilty.
Licari is supposed to show up on December 29 for a hearing to find out if there is enough evidence to send her to trial.