BALTIMORE CITY MAN PLEADS GUILTY TO MISUSE OF ELECTRONIC MAIL

Attorney General J. Joseph Curran, Jr. announced today that Scott Carol Huffines , 41, of the 700 block of Rockaway Beach Avenue, Baltimore City, pleaded guilty to misusing electronic mail (e-mail). Huffines entered a guilty plea before the Honorable Barbara Jung in the District Court of Maryland, Baltimore County. Huffines admitted using electronic mail with the intent to harass a person.

In September 2004, the victim who is employed at Maryland Public Television (MPT) began to receive volumes of unwanted electronic mail at her work email address. In an effort to stem the flow, MPT changed the victim’s email address and once again, she began to receive numerous unwanted e-mails from dating services, job lines, and other unwanted e-mails. The Office of the Attorney General began an investigation and traced three of the electronic messages to a Comcast account of Scott Huffines. Huffines was employed at MPT as a web designer and was supervised by the victim. Without the victim’s permission or knowledge, the defendant signed up his supervisor’s MPT e-mail address onto list serves from his home. When Huffines was interviewed in November 2004, he admitted to signing up the victim’s e-mail address on more than one day and directing the items to be sent to her new e-mail address. He further stated that he knew it annoyed her.

Huffines subsequently resigned from MPT.

Admonishing the defendant for being "gutless" for not discussing any issues he had with his supervisor directly, Judge Jung sentenced Huffines to two years unsupervised probation before judgment and ordered the defendant to perform 100 hours of community service in educating children about appropriate use of the internet. A $500.00 fine was suspended. Judge Jung commented that she was pleased that the Attorney General’s office is handling these types of cases as this will send a message to the community that people will be prosecuted.

During sentencing, the victim addressed the court stating that this has been a sad and difficult experience for her and that she felt betrayed by the defendant.

This case was investigated and prosecuted by the Criminal Investigations Division of the Office of the Attorney General in cooperation with the Maryland State Police.  

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