LOS ANGELES—A former Marine from Orange County was sentenced July 13 to two years behind bars for using hundreds of Twitter accounts to torment a professional online gamer he fixated on during a long-running harassment campaign.
Evan Baltierra, 30, of Trabuco Canyon, was also ordered to serve three years of supervised release after he gets out of prison and pay $2,544 in restitution to the victim, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Baltierra pleaded guilty last year in Los Angeles to one count of stalking.
Baltierra met the victim, a prominent “World of Warcraft” gamer whose name was not released, at a convention in Anaheim in November 2019. After the meeting, Baltierra asked to meet the woman in her hometown in Calgary, Canada, which made her feel uncomfortable, according to papers filed in Los Angeles federal court.
After the victim blocked Baltierra on her social media accounts, Baltierra created hundreds of new accounts to send the gamer threatening messages and spam her online video game stream.
One threatening message sent via Twitter in January 2021 stated that he was “waiting for the right opportunity,” prosecutors said.
In October 2020, Baltierra hired an unknown person to create multiple photoshopped nude images of the victim that placed her face onto pornographic images, court papers say.
From November 2020 to March 2022, Baltierra posted the photoshopped nude images to multiple pornographic websites and internet forums. He also sent the images to the victim’s friends and family.
Baltierra further posted links to the images on various social media websites and told others online to search for the woman’s name to see naked pictures of her.
The government recommends a sentence of 37 months imprisonment, followed by a three-year term of supervised release, a $15,000 fine, and $2,544 in restitution to the victim. Defense attorneys recommend that the court impose a sentence no more than 12 months behind bars.
“Most concerning is defendant’s inability to stop his criminal behavior despite multiple opportunities to do so,” prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memorandum. “After his actions led to a restraining order in March and April of 2021, defendant continued to harass and attempt to contact [the victim].”
In January 2021, even after a protective order was served on him, Baltierra began posting the victim’s personal information—including her name and city of residence, which were listed on the protective order—to social media websites and during her live video game streams.
Baltierra also posted the woman’s Twitter handle to pornographic websites along with the nude images he had created.
During the victim’s live video game streams, Baltierra used multiple accounts to continually post harassing messages. Baltierra’s spamming of the victim made it impossible for her to stream herself playing video games and forced her to stop streaming in February 2021, according to federal prosecutors.
In June 2021, two months after Baltierra and the woman reached a settlement in which he agreed never to contact her or her family and friends in exchange for the victim dissolving the temporary restraining order, Baltierra called the victim’s local police department.
In the phone call, Baltierra requested the police conduct a welfare check of the victim by lying to the police that the woman had made threats online that she was going to commit suicide. Baltierra also attempted to obtain the victim’s home address during that phone call. The police later visited the woman’s home for a welfare check.
From January to March of 2022, Baltierra sent threatening messages to the victim via various social media accounts, including one message that read, “get a casket ready.” Baltierra also wrote a letter to the parents of the victim’s boyfriend, which stated, in part, that the situation was going to end badly for her, court papers show.
Baltierra also admitted sending the victim an unsolicited suspicious package that later was determined to contain a box of condoms.
