Nadire Atas, a Canadian who has written thousands of online posts defaming her alleged enemies, was arrested Tuesday by police in Toronto. She has been charged with crimes, including harassment and defamation, a Toronto police spokeswoman said.
Ms. Atas, 60, has waged an online war against dozens of people in recent years, falsely accusing them of being scammers, thieves, sexual deviants and pedophiles. His targets included a family that employed him 30 years ago; your mortgage lender; lawyers with whom she fought in court, as well as those who represented her; and their relatives and colleagues.
The arrest and charges followed a New York Times article published on January 30 that detailed his campaign of harassment and defamation, illustrating the destruction that a person can cause thanks to the hands-free posture of big tech companies like Google.
Ms. Atas was charged with 10 counts of harassment, defamatory slander and dissemination of false information with the intention of alarming, said Caroline de Kloet, the police spokeswoman. “This was a long and complex investigation involving countless victims,” she said.
Last month, a Toronto judge ordered Atas to stop his online attacks against 45 people who had sued her for defamation. But posts about the plaintiffs and their families continued to appear on sites like BadGirlReports and Cheaters.News.
Ms. Atas, who told The Times that she suffered from mental health problems in the past, did not respond to requests for comment about her arrest.
The targets of Ms. Atas’ attacks – including Guy Babcock, whose family employed her at her Canadian real estate office – have tried for years to get the police to take criminal measures against her by filing police reports in the United States, Britain and Canada, where your victims lived. The criminal charges filed this week are the first that Atas has faced in relation to his online postings.
The police recently took an interest in the case, said Christina Wallis, a lawyer who has been involved in litigation with Atas since 2008 and has been the target of her online attacks.
The day after The Times published its article, which widely quoted Ms. Wallis, a website called GossipBlaze.com sent her by email, saying that she believed that Ms. Atas had “spammed our application form. with dozens, if not hundreds of posts ”.
“Almost all of them have the same IP and we think it can be useful to pass that information on,” said the e-mail, referring to an internet protocol address, a unique identifier used by a computer or computer network.
Ms. Wallis shared the email and IP address with a group of victims who had previously contacted the police. One of them, Luc Groleau, determined that the IP address probably originated from a computer at a hotel in eastern Toronto. Groleau shared the information with a lawyer, who said he alerted the police about the whereabouts of Atas.