In September 2023, a man posing as Cary Police Detective Steven Cooper sent a false search warrant to Verizon Wireless, demanding phone records for a Wake County woman he falsely accused of being a murder suspect, federal prosecutors said.
“Cooper,” it was later revealed, was actually a New Mexico man named Robert Glauner. And the woman he thought lived in Cary was not a suspect but someone he stalked after making contact with her online, prosecutors say.
Glauner is facing multiple federal criminal charges. Today, he and Verizon are also facing a civil lawsuit filed by the woman whose phone records were released by the company.
In the lawsuit, the woman, identified by the initials “MD,” accuses Verizon of causing emotional distress through recklessness and negligence, and of violating the Stored Communications Act, which is designed to protect electronic communications from unauthorized third parties.
“This was a systemic error by Verizon,” attorney Amanda Dure of the Washington, D.C., law firm Pangia Law Group, who represents MD in the case, told The News & Observer.
Thanks to Verizon's revelations, Glauner was able to obtain MD's full name, her new phone number and her address, information he used to ramp up his intimidation efforts, Dure said.
The lawsuit, filed in the Eastern District of North Carolina, seeks a jury trial to determine potential punitive and compensatory damages against Verizon.
Verizon officials did not immediately respond to The News & Observer's request for comment Monday morning.
Threats, phone calls and a threatening visit
According to the FBI, Glauner met the woman in August 2023 on the porn website xhamster.com, which has a dating feature.
The woman gave Glauner her phone number but not her real name, using the alias “Mia” instead, according to a federal lawsuit the woman filed Monday in Raleigh against Glauner and Verizon.
MD “became uncomfortable with Glauner” shortly after they made contact, and eventually blocked his number, according to the lawsuit. Glauner then used alternate phone numbers to get around the block. When MD contacted police, they advised her to change her phone number.
MD visited a Verizon store on or about Sept. 21 to have her number changed. She told Verizon employees that she “wanted to change her number because she was being harassed,” the lawsuit says. Her number was changed.
After being given Verizon's new MD phone number, Glauner resumed his harassment.
On Oct. 13, MD's mother received a voice message from Glauner about his attempts to contact her daughter, according to the FBI affidavit. Between Oct. 13 and Oct. 22, the mother received 10 separate voice messages from Glauner, who said “he wouldn't stop until he could reach MD.”
On October 15, Glauner called the Raleigh Wake Emerging Communications Center under a different alias to request a welfare check on MD's address, reporting that a resident at the location was making a suicide threat. Raleigh police identified it as a hoax call.
The next day, according to the FBI, Glauner sent another false search warrant to Verizon for MD's phone number. RPD saw similar formatting errors in the request (among other things) and denied it. That same day, October 16, MD's father received a text message from a phone number associated with Glauner, which included a photo of MD and the text “Do you know this girl?”
And on October 19th, MD's coworker got a call from a man who wanted to speak to MD. He got angry when the coworker lied and said that no one by that name worked in the store.
The coworker recorded the conversation, and Raleigh police identified the speaker as Glauner. He called MD's store multiple times over the next few days, “and the frequency of the calls was disruptive to employees and the business,” the affidavit said.
On October 26, MD obtained a prepaid phone and gave the number to Glauner, intending to limit the number of messages to her family and colleagues.
Police continued to investigate Glauner. They learned that he was likely a resident of New Mexico and was also wanted by the San Diego Sheriff's Office for stalking.
On November 5, MD received a call from Glauner. He said he was on his way to Cary to see her. Later that day, she received a threatening text message from him, offering to buy a gun and ammunition. “I can't have you, no one can,” he wrote, according to a sworn statement.
The next day, a Wake County magistrate judge issued a warrant for Glauner's arrest. Authorities monitored his phone activity and saw that he was traveling toward Raleigh. For their safety, MD and her family had left their home.
On the night of Nov. 6, RPD arrested Glauner while he was standing in a neighbor’s yard. He was found in possession of a black folding knife, the affidavit said, and authorities later found two bundles of rope in the car he was driving to North Carolina.
Glauner also had two cell phones in his possession when he was arrested, one of which displayed an image of MD on the lock screen. He was taken to the Wake County Detention Center and served his outstanding warrants.
In January, Glauner was charged by federal officials with three felonies, including obtaining confidential telephone records, making false statements and obtaining telephone records by posing as a Cary police detective and by filing a false search warrant with a forged judge's signature.
Verizon reviews requests for personal information
Verizon, the largest U.S. mobile carrier, has a security team to support law enforcement with court orders and subpoenas. The company has assured customers online that “we carefully review every demand we receive to ensure it is valid.”
Cooper's message contained a number of warning signs that later emerged in an affidavit by an FBI special agent.
The “search warrant” was not formatted correctly and lacked a standard form required by North Carolina law. It did not come from an official government email, but from an encrypted private Proton address. And Cary police later confirmed that Detective Steven Cooper did not exist.
In October 2023, Raleigh police detectives determined the warrant was false, the affidavit states. The judge who allegedly signed the request, Gale Adams, is a real Cumberland County Superior Court judge, but she informed officers that the signature on the warrant was not hers.
“Verizon's dangerous actions directly jeopardized our customer's safety,” Dure said, adding that “this wasn't just an honest mistake. One sign of fraud followed another and another and another — and yet this information was freely given.”
