Crime & Safety

Sheriff's Attorney Subpoenas Google To Determine Blog Owner

McHenry County Sheriff's Office attorney asks judge for sanctions against former Deputy Zane Seipler for publicizing sealed documents on the Internet.

A controversial blog featuring official-looking documents from the McHenry County Sheriff’s Office vanished from the Internet shortly after it was 

Sheriff’s Office attorneys subpoenaed Google on June 8 in an effort to uncover who published the site. Google owns Blogspot.com, the site that hosted the blog The Real MCSO Exposed

The documents on the blog appeared to bear the seal of the McHenry County Sheriff’s Office and dated back 15 years, including a 1997 case appearing to involve McHenry County Sheriff’s deputies with alcohol and drugs.

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Sheriff’s attorney Jim Sotos said the documents on the site are specific to former Deputy Zane Seipler’s 2008 civil rights lawsuit against his client, which is pending in federal court. 

Sotos’ office required Google to preserve all the user account information associated with the blog including profiles, email addresses, screen names and detailed billings even though the blog has been removed.

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Google has notified the account holder via the email address linked to the blog about the inquiry, said Elizabeth Barton, an associate attorney in Soto’s office. 

Barton subsequently has uncovered some of the same documents posted to another Blogspot website called Shadow’s MSCD. She’s been following the blog’s activity, making copies of those items that are confidential to the case as they appear. Usually, they are quickly removed from the site, she said. 

“We’re going to go through the same process for this blog by sending the preservation letter,” Barton said. 

Barton has found 10 websites referring to McHenry County Sheriff’s Office, all but one on Blogspot. Attorneys are only interested in those where the court-sealed documents relating to Seipler’s case appear, which to date is only Shadow’s MSCD

The documents – copies of internal investigations conducted by the sheriff’s office – were provided to Seipler and his attorney as part of the discovery process related to the lawsuit, but they were provided on the condition that they not be publicized. 

Seipler has denied publicizing the documents and has accused the Sheriff’s Office of releasing the documents itself, according to court documents. 

“The only people that had the documents with the redacted version are me and my associate; my office,” Sotos said. “My clients never had those documents in that form, so that response doesn’t make any sense at all.” 

Sotos plans to ask the judge for an evidentiary hearing on the matter. 

“We’ll put people under oath if need be,” he said. 

Seipler’s wrongful termination suit alleges he was fired by the department after accusing some deputies of racial profiling as a means to increase arrest quotas for performance reviews and promotional opportunities. 

Sheriff Keith Nygren said Seipler was fired for misconduct to which he admitted.

Seipler did not immediately return phone calls requesting comment for this article.

 


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