Hacked - Pretend: The Stalker - Part 1

Episode Date: March 1, 2024

Two competing stories about a cyberstalking that all comes down to an IP address. Today's episode was a partnership with "Pretend," hosted by Javier Leiva. Pretend is a true crime podcast about con artists. Definitely check it out wherever you get your shows. Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2vaCjR7UvlN9aTIzW6kNCo Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/pretend-a-true-crime-podcast-about-con-artists/id1245307962 RSS: Click here Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, everybody. This is an episode swap with our pals over at Pretend Podcast. We're going to intro the story in a second, but just wanted to give you a heads up. Some folks sound like they've had a hard time finding where you can listen to the rest of the series we're playing the pilot for. It's definitely free. Check out the pretend podcast and your podcaster of choice and scroll down until you find the rest of the stalker mini series and look for episode two. If that's not your cup of tea, no sweat. We'll catch you in the next one. And big thanks to pretend for sharing hacked with their lovely listeners. and helping us grow the show. It means a lot. At the heart of this story that we're going to be bringing you, it's actually two competing stories about a cyberstocking. In order to explain the story, I almost have to spoil the ending for you. There's this middle-aged couple living in Phoenix, Arizona.

Salt of the Earth, very religious. You know, the husband's a postal worker. They have five kids together. And they reached out to Haveyer, the journalist you just heard about this cyber-stalking. They reached out to me because they said that they were being stocked by their daughter's, doctor's husband. Their daughter's doctor's husband was cyber-stalking them.

The daughter's doctor's husband, who doesn't even know this family is stalking them. And they wanted Javier to look into it, to investigate. So he starts reporting on it, starts talking with them, texting and calling. He starts digging. into what's going on here. And pretty quickly, Javier starts to develop these suspicions about the case and the accusations themselves. Like Javier, I'm reluctant to spoil exactly where this goes, but as he's talking to these people,

I'm starting to get the sense that maybe they aren't being stocked. Maybe they are stocking themselves. The focus of his investigation starts to shift on its access a little bit. keeps digging. So we recruited a white hat, you know, ethical hacker, who's very familiar with OScent, to try to figure out, you know, if we could narrow down the device, like who is sending these messages? Because the messages that the family say they were getting was coming from the IP address where the family lives.

And suddenly this story about these two families. becomes a story about technology. We were trying to put it to the test from a technological standpoint, right? Like, is it possible to spoof somebody's IP address, you know, from just sitting outside their house and creating all these accounts? Heavier makes the excellent show pretend. And a few years ago, he gets onto this bizarre cyber-stalking story and slowly over time, he just gets more knotted up in the old thing.

That was tricky because, remember, I talked to these people for like two years, and at the beginning, I really did believe them. If somebody tells me that they're being stalked, I take their word for it. And I think most people should take a victim's word for it, because that's a real big problem. Police are no help in stocking situations. So we should believe the victims. But after a while, I just had to pretend that I believed them because I just, I wasn't buying it. Things weren't adding up. It just didn't make sense.

And then once we started getting all the data in terms of the IP addresses, you know, that's the usernames and all these facts that were indisputable. Javier's show covers different con artists each episode. But this story, which he titled The Stalker, it took on a life of its own and became like an 18 or 19 part series that covers years of investigation. We've got the first chapter of that story here for you today. I was just so deep into the rabbit hole, it kind of took on a life of its own, you know,

and I kind of became part of the story somehow. Like I almost got called in as a witness in court. And I'm like, I was just reporting the story. I don't like to inject myself into the story, but somehow I became part of it in the middle of it. Some of my favorite stories that we talk about on this show are the ones where technology and security are jumping off points for a tale about, like, people and all of the weird things that we do to each other. And this is, this is definitely that. I really appreciate Javier bringing it to us. You should all check out Pretend.

We'll link to it in the show notes. For now, this is part one of the Pretend podcast series, The Stalker. here on hacked. This guy put a threat out to our home and he said, I'm in your neighborhood and I'm going to kill your family. I'm going to kill you. I'm tired of being silenced. I want the story out about how what can happen to the average family and how how people can get away with it. Because law enforcement does not want to tackle it.

And also what it can do to your mental health. I mean, it's affected me in a detrimental way. And I really don't want anyone else to have to go through what I personally have gone through and what I've been accused of. Meet Claudia and David Rodriguez. That's not their real names, by the way. I'm withholding their identities because they say they've been the target of a sadistic cyberstalker for more than three years now. And unfortunately, the stocking is still happening, even today. I've changed the locations, the profession of some of the people in the story, just to protect everyone involved.

I started working on this story a year and a half ago, and I've been witnessing the stocking in real time. And let me tell you, it's terrifying, even for me, and I'm not even the one being tormented. I think the only way that this would make sense to me is to really start for the beginning. This is a recording of my first conversation with Claudia and David. One of the many dozens of calls we recorded the last year and a half. I have a lot of questions about the Instagram accounts. A lot of the ones that you listed in that timeline are no longer active, but then I did just find one that is.

Oh, did you? And then I found the person that the people that he was following, it's all porn. Really? Wow. So, yeah. That was just like a quick search. This goes without saying that this is the longest I've ever worked on a story. Remember, these harassing calls are still happening today.

I have no idea how many episodes this will be or how the series will end. But my plan is to identify the stalker. It's a long shot. Just know that there are some crazy twists and turns in the story. And things are not always what they seem. Claudia and David are at a loss for what to do. They say no one wants to help them. They've tried involving the police, but get this, the police appeared to be on the side of the stalker.

Listen to this recording of a recent call with a detective on the case. This has been a freaking nightmare. Detectives are convinced that Claudia and David are making this whole thing up. What I'm telling you, every search warrant I've ever done has led back to you guys. It's ridiculous. When I get death threats about him wanting to go and blow my husband's head off quite often. And it rattles my nerves. I can't take it.

I can't take this anymore. This is not right. And then I get accused of having a split personality and maybe you're doing it and you don't realize it. That's ridiculous. That's ridiculous. I do not have a split personality. I promised Claudia and David that I would do everything in my power. to help them solve this case.

I'm Javier Leva, and this is pretend. Stories about real people, pretending to be someone else. Think about the last time you heard a breach story on this show. It always starts the same way. Someone, somewhere, saw something too late, an alert buried, a signal missed, an SOC that just couldn't keep up. Arctic Wolf set out to solve that problem by rebuilding security operations from the ground up for a world where attackers are already using

AI. They created the Aurora super intelligence platform, a fully agentic system powered by the swarm of experts. Instead of single-purpose bots or lucky-guess LLMs, this swarm is full of deterministic agents that handle whole entire workflows. Humans stay in the loop and on the loop to validate the critical decisions and keep everything trustworthy, and all of this is just off running on their secure operations graph. A constantly updating intelligence engine fueled by more than nine trillion telemetry events every week and over a decade of real-world incident response. The system reasons on real signals and real context, not synthetic training data. And the result is the new Aurora Agent SOC. It's the first SOC that is agent led by design.

You get agents that coordinate, agents that investigate, agents that respond at machine speed, and hundreds more that automate the repetitive work that normally buries human analysts. Arctic Wolf didn't try and bolt AI onto an old model. They rebuilt the model entirely. What makes it even more effective is how it works with Arctic Wolf's concierge experience. The team brings customer-specific context directly into the platform so every AI-driven decision reflects your environment instead of generic assumptions. The automation frees your concierge security team to focus on higher value strategy and proactive risk reductions while the agents handle the grind. If you want to see what trustworthy, production-ready AI insecurity operations actually looks like, go to arcticwolf.com slash hacked. Never feel like cyber threats are evolving faster than anyone can keep up?

Last year, 2025 was nothing short of a record-breaking year for major breaches, from sophisticated ransomware operators to AI-enabled attacks to turn defenses on their head. Organizations around the world saw headlines they never expected and cybersecurity teams were tested like never before. But here's the thing. These incidents aren't just news headlines. They're learning opportunities. And that's why Arctic Wolf is hosting a live webinar on February 5th diving to the most impactful

breaches of 2025. Their field CTO and security leaders are going to unfurting. pack not just what happened, but why these attacks succeeded, and most importantly, what businesses can do to fortify their defenses for it's too late. You're going to walk away with real insights in how threat actors are evolving, how defenders are responding, and what strategies can help you stay ahead of the next big breach. It's not fear-mongering. It's practical, actionable, intelligence from experts in the trenches. Register now at arcticwolf.com slash hacked. So where should we begin? Maybe the best place to start is by describing the characters.

Claudia and David are a middle-aged couple who live out west. Let's just say Albuquerque, Las Vegas, you know, that neck of the woods. I've grown very close to them over the course of this reporting. We talk in texts all the time. Claudia is a stay-at-home mom and David is a postal worker. They're very religious and they're active in their Jehovah's Witness Church. They're the kind of people who don't cuss. Although you will hear them repeat the stalker's foul language throughout the series.

And it's really filthy stuff, guys. So you've been warned, this podcast is not safe for work, and it is not for kids. The bottom line is that they seem like very normal people. Now, let's talk about the alleged stalker. Claudia and David believe they know who's sending these sadistic messages. The suspect, they say, is someone they know. Well, we know that he was on our property because he took a picture. this was like a year and a half ago.

He took a picture of what you would see from our front yard. I know it was the day that he said it was because it had rained the night before. And there was puddles. And there was water in the gutter. And it doesn't rain here much. This has been a nightmare. The stalker has identified himself as their daughter's pediatric neurologist husband. Yep.

Let me repeat that. They believe that their daughter's doctor's husband is stalking them. I know. It doesn't make any sense. Why would a doctor's husband want to stock his wife's patients? Remember, we're not using anybody's real name. So let's call the doctor, Dr. Grace Gressman, and her husband, the alleged stalker, John Gressman. How did this start? I mean, how did you become a victim of a stalker? Well, first of all, the healthcare professional, I'll put it that way, that health might daughter. She has a, the last name is unique. It's not common. And so I was, I had a Instagram page because I'm interested in photography. And anyway, we, my, my daughter really likes to look at,

look at the Instagram. And anyway, she was looking at my, at my page and she noticed that one, a person that liked it had, it was a man profile that had, the same last name as her doctor. As her medical. As her medical provider. And she said, I wonder if that's the husband. And so I said, I don't know. She goes, why don't you ask him?

So I message and said, would you happen to be her husband? And he said, I am. He expressed interest in my photography. He expressed interest in maybe me teaching him. how to use his camera. He goes, I would like a family portrait. We don't have any pictures of me and my wife. He wants a family portrait.

Let's recap. David is surfing Instagram with his daughter, and they noticed that the doctor's husband, John Gressman, liked their photography page. This family has never interacted with the doctor's husband, not in real life, and definitely not online. This person claiming to be John Gresman, the doctor's husband, loved David's photography so much that he asked David if he was willing to take

the Gresman's family portrait. He wanted to surprise his wife, the doctor. It was supposed to be a big secret. David, of course, said yes. But keep in mind, this all started out very friendly. John Gresman, the doctor's husband, was so excited about the family portraits that suddenly members from the Gresman family were messaging David directly. And then soon enough, he brought his brother in to A profile. A profile supposedly of his brother. And then he brought in his mother. And then the fourth profile was the brother's wife.

I always think about if my husband was going to surprise me with family photos, I would want to make sure that a female in my wife's life was involved to pick out the right clothing and the right look. so I contacted it and said I'm kind of his helper. And he even specified an area of the state that we live in for the photos. So we went on a scouting trip to scout out the right area for these photos. And we took a lot of time and energy doing that. And everything was going well.

And he acts kind of odd. Was he there with you? No, this was all done through Instagram. It was all done through message. from Instagram. So you were scouting this area and just sending him pictures of the surrounding area. Yeah, he had a specific area in mind. So anyway, he just started acting a little bit bizarre.

He told me that he has like ADHD and he can't control himself. And he just kept saying, I'm so excited. I'm so excited. We both thought that was really weird. Yeah, he would text me and I would, I got to the point where I just ignored him. because I couldn't catch up with all that. Yeah. And so let me get this straight.

So you're a photographer. Is it more of a hobby or is it a profession? It's a hobby right now. And I was very new with photography at that time. So to have a potential job already, it brought a level of excitement to our lives. We were excited because I really had a high level of respect for this medical. professional and to be able to do something for her as a surprise. Like, I just thought that was going to be the coolest thing ever.

And my daughter has had, has an extensive medical history. So she has developed a distrust for most doctors. After the whole excitement of him constantly texting us, saying how excited he was, he kind of got kind of friendly with me. And he started asking me things like his wife's relationship with his brother that they spent time together. And it bothered him. And he asked me if that would bother me if my husband did that. I don't know why you're asking me this, you know.

He was just giving us a lot of personal information about their relationship. And it was just very, very strange. Very strange indeed. Then even more Greshman family members started messaging Claudia and David. And then the sister-in-law started. communicating with me because ironically, the brother and sister-in-law had a handicapped child that had a lot of the same disabilities that our own daughter has. You know, I'm all about advocacy. So if a mother needs help with finding a doctor, finding a therapist, anything, I'm all about

advocacy because I struggled to do that when our daughter was younger. It was hard. Claudia says she formed an online friendship with a doctor's sister-in-law. So we became really good friends. Even though it was through Instagram texting, we became really good like mom friends. We never ever spoke physically with any of these profiles. It was all through texting. She told me that this medical professional and her spouse had a lot of serious relationship issues. And it was just really weird.

Let me interrupt you because you said, You almost implied that there was like inappropriate conversations happening. What was it that she was saying that it was inappropriate? Well, she told me that the doctor or the medical professional had an alcohol problem and that she was doing medical procedures on patients while she was intoxicated and that she was having flings and this, that and the other. This is about your daughter's doctor. Yes.

Yes. And I just told her, I go, listen. I said, that's her personal life. And I have a different relationship with her. She's my daughter's favorite doctor. So just imagine, suddenly all these family members are messaging Claudia and David. They're getting bombarded with Instagram direct messages, especially from John Greshman, the doctor's husband.

But he got kind of bizarre after a couple of weeks saying things like he was talking about his wife. She never came home. And when she comes home, I'm going to beat her up. Stuff like that. And it would upset me. And I'm like, don't do that. And at one point, he kept me up all night on, like, it was like the week, the weekend or the week of 4th of July of 2019.

He said, guess where I am? And I said, I don't know. And he said, I'm in the parking lot of the hospital where his wife worked. And he said, I'm going to sit here all night and wait for her to show up and going to kill her. And he kept me up all night. And I'm like hysterical. He said things like I'm going to stab her in the neck and I'm going to, I'm in McDonald's, and I'm going to buy her favorite food and shove it down her throat and tape her mouth so she chokes on it.

And I'm going to take her out into the desert and burn her body. What should Claudia and David do? And this man is making death threats towards his own wife. Should Claudia and David tell the doctor about these strange messages? At one of my daughter's appointments shortly after we contacted this. individual asking if that's her husband. I told her during this appointment, I said, so your husband, your husband liked one of my pictures on Instagram.

She had a look on her face like she saw a ghost. It wasn't happy. It was just like she was like nervous. Yeah. She had like a nervous look on her face. She ignored him. I found that to be really weird. Because he also said things like, well, the.

profile that you mentioned the sister-in-law. They both told me, never tell her that you're communicating with her family because she will get very upset. Time out, because that's what I wanted to ask you guys. Yeah. At what point do you say, hey, we're not going to, this photo shoot is, we're calling it off. This is crazy. He's threatening to kill his wife and all that stuff.

I mean, at what point? Because this sounds. When it got to the point where he was making death threats and like that, you know what, if there is a shoot, it's not going to be a happy one. No. So this is off. And I, I'm not doing it. It's crazy.

Right. And he would taunt us like, well, you're still going to do it because you said you would. And we're still doing it. And I'm like, we're not doing it. We are not going to do it. I think it was weird. Yes. That this guy, the husband, all these other people in his life, his sister-in-law, his brother,

all these people are messaging you. Do they have like actual mature Instagram accounts? Do they have lots of pictures and all of the accounts? They would have very, they would have the name and then a number. Like maybe their age. Like so and so 40. And then they would have like a certain amount of people that they follow and a certain amount of follow.

And they were all the same. Yeah. It was all about the same amount. And they were all private accounts. Claudia and David were done playing games. Something about all these people was just not adding up. So they decided to do a little research. We finally had enough.

And I said, you know what? I told my best friend, I said, I'm getting creeped out. I'm going to do a Ben Verified on the doctor and find out if any of these people actually exist in her life. Ben verified is a public records database. Anyone can look up basic information about another person for a small fee. It turns out that some of these people they were interacting with don't even exist. So this was mid-August and I threatened to call the police and they all shut down and stopped talking. So I thought, okay, fine, you know, they're going to leave us alone now.

And just like that, the messages stopped. The doctor's husband, the brother, the mother, the sister-in-law, everyone just stopped messaging. About two weeks later, Claudia and Davis' daughter was scheduled to have a medical procedure with Dr. Grisman. And we were in a private room. She was just giving us an update about the surgery. The door was shut. And then I said, I need to tell you something that's really uncomfortable. And I said, we've been harassed by someone claiming to be your family members. And they've threatened to kill you. They've told us some not so nice things about you. And it really bothers me and I'm worried for your safety. And I know that you're a victim and that we're victims too. And I'm,

I wouldn't feel right about not telling you. And she got flushed. And she said, this happened to me one other time. And maybe you'll be my guardian angel and figure it out. Figure out who it is. Who it is? And figure it out. That's what she said.

Does she not admit that that was her husband? She claimed that they didn't have social media, which isn't true. She just said that someone had harassed her before on social media. and she didn't give us a lot of details, but she said, maybe you'll be my guardian angel and help figure it out. So then she went and got the security guard from this facility, and he asked me why I didn't call the police?

And I said, well, Claudia told him that the sister-in-law who was messaging her mentioned that she had already called the police. And so I figured that the police had already been called. And then the doctor came by and whispered something to the security guard. the security guard told us that he had called the police and that they were on their way. Well, we sat there for two and a half hours and they never showed up. So my daughter was discharged and we went home.

A day and a half later, I get a message on Instagram from the supposed real husband. John Greshman. And he said, and I'm really, really sorry that this happened to you. And my wife told me what had happened. And we're both very, very sorry. It happened one other time. and I want to talk to you. And I said, no, I don't trust you.

I don't trust anybody on social media. And I'm only going to deal with her. He knew information that we exchanged in confidence with the doctor. Yes. For instance, like what? Well, he knew that we, we had, she had us talk to the security guy. And he also used the term that she used. She, she told us, she says, would you love?

like, would you talk to my go-to person? When she went to get-and-her-go-to person she went to get was the chief of captain of security of the hospital. He used that term. He said, go-to person. I'm the, I'm her go-to person. He got super aggressive because I kept saying, no, we're not going to meet you, no, we're not going to talk to you.

And I said, I'm only going to deal with her. Go-to person. Remember that. That's a very specific term. the same term Dr. Gresman used for her security captain. And at that time, when he said, I'm her go-to person, we actually were thinking that it was the security captain that is the one that's doing all this

because he said, I'm her go-to person. Right. I got a message about an hour after we left the hospital, and he said, I saw you on campus today with your retarded daughter. Whoever's making these threatening messages is very close to Dr. Gresman. I mean, who else would know all the details they know? On September 2019, police contacted Ryan Fremsted, the captain of the security team at the hospital. The security captain informed the officers that he was aware that someone had been creating fake Instagram accounts under Dr. Gresman's name since March. Funny enough, Claudia and David say they didn't start getting messages until late June.

The security captain mentioned that early on, before the Rodriguez family was involved, there was a woman claiming to be a former patient of Dr. Gresman, accusing the doctor of botching her child's surgery. The security captain said he checked, and there are no records of this person ever getting surgery at the hospital. Remember, I'm getting this information directly from the police report. In the message exchange, Dr. Gresman was threatening to kill herself. The mystery patient also made threats to blow up the hospital.

hospital. Frimsted, the security captain said that when he questioned Dr. Greshman about these messages, she told him that neither she nor her husband have an Instagram account. According to the security captain, he was able to contact Instagram and get the accounts taken down. And that seemed to work for a while. After he reported the accounts, the messages seemed to stop. That is, until Claudia and David alerted Dr. Gresman of the new Instagram handles using

the doctor's name. When the security captain contacted the Rodriguez family asking for the screenshots of the messages, he told the police that the couples refused. They made excuses saying that the messages were too large or they were too many of them. We know one thing for sure. Someone is sending these messages. If it's not coming from Dr. Gresman and her husband, then who else is doing it? Claudia and David started wondering, what if the perpetrator is someone close to this case?

What if these messages were coming from the hospital security captain? On September 30th, 2019, Claudia filed the police report alleging that Ryan Framsted, the hospital security guard, was the person responsible for sending these posts. Yeah, we thought was his security guard. Because we felt like we were, we actually, you know how you get that feeling like you're being watched? Like there's eyes on you. That's how we felt when we went when we went there. and then to get that message, we thought, wow, he saw us.

He was watching us. Next time on Pretend, Claudia and David continue getting harassing messages from the person claiming to be the doctor's husband. But is it possible that we've been looking at the wrong suspect this whole time? Could it be that the hospital security captain is the stalker? Also, police step up their investigation. After a six-hour stakeout, police narrowed down the location where the messages originated. Seriously, you won't see it coming. That was part one of the stalker.

The entire series is available right now for you to binge on Apple Podcasts for subscribers of the new Pretend Plus channel. If you're an Apple Podcast listener, just hit the subscribe button. You can even try it for free for three days. And the entire series is also available right now on Patreon to my Patreon supporters. I'll have the link to that in the show notes. This is going to be a wild ride. I've spent the last year and a half talking with Claudia and David on the phone, following closely as the cyberstalker torments their family.

It's been a roller coaster of emotions. I record all of our calls, every single one, but honestly, I never intended for any of this to actually air. I felt that my involvement in this situation can only make matters worse. If there's truly a stalker after them, then airing this will only aggravate the situation. I've told Claudia and David multiple times that I don't want to turn this into a podcast series, and each time they insist that their story needs to be told. I'm all for you moving on with the story, though, and it's an important story that needs to be told.

And I don't really care how it would benefit us. They say the police has let them down time and time again, and they are out of options. I've explained that even if I decided to do this story, I won't reveal their real names, but honestly, I think they would have been fine having their names out there. That doesn't make sense to me, but I wouldn't want my name out there. Also, I'm doing this to protect the doctor and her husband.

After all, they are private citizens who have never been charged with the crime. For all we know, they may have nothing to do with this. In fact, let me make this clear. There is absolutely no evidence that they're part of this, nothing. So why air these episodes? Well, I finally decided to move forward with this project after two years of saying no. But I'm in it now. I can't look away, and honestly, it's important for you, the listener, to realize how little defense you have when facing an online stalker.

There are very few laws with actual teeth to prevent and prosecute these types of cases. That alone is worth telling the story. So if you or someone you know is involved in a cyberstalker situation, I want to help you get the resources you need. First things first, call the police if you ever feel like you're in danger. Tell your friends, your neighbors, your coworkers, so that they, they'll help you. could look out for suspicious activities. But also be aware that most stalkers tend to be close to you.

Find an advocate who can help you file a protective order and help you connect with the right resources. And this last part is critical. Document every incident and create a timeline. Try to end all contact with the stalker. Never respond. Don't answer their calls. Any interaction encourages the behavior.

And if you have little ones, prepare them for what to do if there's an emergency. Always have a plan. For more information for victims of cyberstalking, go to stockingawareness.org.