May 30--A St. Paul man has pleaded guilty to a federal weapons charge while remaining under suspicion of trying to force an Ohio State University student to pay him not to post on the Internet nude images of her from her stolen laptop.
Demonte J. Latimore, 24, pleaded guilty Tuesday in federal court in St. Paul to being a felon in possession of a firearm. Latimore, a six-time felon, has convictions for burglaries and car thefts. He now faces a minimum sentence of 15 years in prison.
St. Paul police were looking for Latimore in February in connection with numerous armed robberies. But it was a stolen Toyota that led authorities to him.
Police found the missing vehicle March 8 and watched him take photos of it with a cell phone, then enter a library at Metropolitan State University, according Ramsey County court records. Police arrested him there and found a semi-automatic pistol in his pocket.
Still hanging over his head is the investigation into the extortion attempt tied to the laptop that was stolen from the college sophomore in December from Ohio State's Newark campus.
Two weeks after the theft, the student began receiving disturbing e-mails demanding hundreds of dollars to prevent the posting of her private photos online.
According to the FBI's Cyber Crime Task Force in Minneapolis, the e-mails were traced to a St. Paul address.
Someone apparently hacked into a folder on the laptop and found nude photos of the woman, along with videos of her having sex with her boyfriend, according to a sworn statement filed by FBI special agent Robert Blackmore.
In a series of e-mails sent between Feb. 27 and March 8, the anonymous writer in St. Paul demanded cash, threatening to send the images and videos to the university, to porn sites, to social networking sites and to the student's friends and family.
The trail eventually led federal investigators to Latimore, who had been released from custody of the Minnesota Department of Corrections one week after the laptop disappeared.
According to the FBI, police took screen shots of the Metro State library computer that Latimore was using when he was arrested. It shows an e-mail exchange that appears to reflect an extortion attempt.
A search of the apartment where Latimore had been living turned up the missing laptop.
Star Tribune staff writer Dan Browning contributed to this report.
Paul Walsh --612-673-4482
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