ATLANTA (AP) - A U.S. State Department employee is accused of sending threatening emails to college-aged women in the U.S. from his computer at the U.S. Embassy in London, authorities said.
A federal complaint unsealed this week in Atlanta states Michael C. Ford accessed computer accounts of young women to obtain sexually explicit images of them.
In one case, prosecutors, say, Ford posed as a Google employee to obtain the password to an Illinois woman's Google email account.
Prosecutors say Ford then threatened to post the images online unless the women complied with his demands, such as requests they shoot videos of other women undressing.
Ford is facing charges that include cyberstalking and making interstate threats. Authorities apprehended him last week at Atlanta's airport as he prepared to board a flight back to London after visiting relatives in Georgia.
Ford is a U.S. citizen who lived in north Georgia before he moved to the United Kingdom in 2005, an affidavit states. Investigators say he began working at the London Embassy in 2009, and lived in South Croydon outside London.
Court records do not say what type of work Ford has done at the embassy. A message left with the U.S. Department of State in Washington was not immediately returned Thursday.
The FBI this year investigated emails sent to women across the U.S., including an 18-year-old Kentucky woman, court records show.
"I want you to record videos of sexy girls changing. In gyms, clothing stores, pools... You do that, and I disappear," he wrote to an 18-year-old Kentucky woman, who pleaded with him to leave her alone, the affidavit states. Investigators said he sent a follow-up email, saying "OK, time's up. Everything I have will be posted online and sent to your friends. Pictures, name, phone number, home address ... I gave you a chance and you blew it!"
A special agent in the FBI's Chicago field office investigated more emails sent to a 22-year-old Illinois woman, threatening to post sexually explicit photos of her. The court records do not identify the women.
Investigators say Ford obtained her address, where she worked and went to school, and the names of her parents, who received emails from him requesting information about their daughter.
A State Department investigator said a search of Ford's computer at the London Embassy turned up a spreadsheet of about 250 email addresses, some of which are associated with schools such as the University of Michigan.