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Date Posted: 21:49:40 03/03/04 Wed
Author: Observer
Subject: Feds file Internet fraud charges



Feds file Internet fraud charges

Noah Wells Longshore of Baldwin County had earlier been named in state bad-check case

03/03/04

By JOE DANBORN
Staff Reporter


A Baldwin County resident who faces state charges of buying computers online with bad checks has been indicted by a federal grand jury in Mobile on charges that he sold high-end electronics through his Web site, then failed to deliver them.

The indictment, returned last week, charges Noah Wells Longshore with three counts of mail fraud and nine counts of wire fraud, alleg ing that he bilked a dozen victims out of a total of more than $64,000. By statute, he could face up to five years in prison and fines if convicted on all of the federal charges.


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Authorities arrested Longshore, 21, a month ago in New Orleans. He has since been brought back to the Mobile area, where he most likely will be tried on the federal allegations before going back to court in Baldwin County.

According to an FBI affidavit, federal agents began look ing into Longshore's activities in December after receiving a series of complaints about a Web site he ran, EZteche.com. The site offered plasma-screen TVs, digital cameras and all manner of computers for sale.

The complaints, which came in through the Internet Fraud Complaint Center, the Alabama attorney general's office and the Better Business Bureau of South Alabama, accused Longshore of taking up to $11,951 from individual customers for goods he ultimately did not send.

Investigators have interviewed Longshore's former roommate, Nicholas Morgan, about the case, but he has not been charged or identified as a suspect.

Longshore could be arraigned on the federal charges as soon as this afternoon, although a date had not been firmly set as of late Tuesday.

"I expect him to enter a plea of not guilty" at his arraignment, said Longshore's court-appointed lawyer, Federal Defender Carlos Williams. Defendants are not permitted to plead guilty at a standard arraignment hearing in federal court.

Longshore's federal case was handled by agents with the local FBI's Cyber Crimes Task Force, which includes investigators from the FBI, the Alabama attorney general's office and the Mobile Police Depart ment and coordinates with U.S. postal inspectors.

In 1997, Longshore was named the most talented boy in his eighth-grade class at Central Baldwin Middle School. He grew up in Robertsdale, according to court documents, and lived there until moving with a roommate into a mobile home in Fairhope, the location where investigators believe he operated the EZteche site.

Baldwin County prosecutors charged Longshore more than a year ago with felony theft and related charges for a scheme in which he reportedly ordered several computers from sellers on the online auction house eBay.com, using bogus checks to pay for the machines. At least three computers and nearly $8,000 were involved, according to statements by Gulf Shores police that are part of the court record.

Prosecutors agreed to give Longshore pre-trial diversion, a sort of probation which, if completed, allows the charges to be erased from his record. Longshore violated the conditions of that program, however, when he was arrested twice last year in Baldwin County on suspicion of driving under the influence of alcohol, according to Tom "Tank" Dasinger, the lawyer who represented him on the Baldwin County charges. Those cases are pending.

Following his arrest in New Orleans, Longshore told court officials he had a problem with alcohol, court records show.

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