Adam Savader, the 21-year-old Great Neck resident and former intern for the Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan campaign who was arrested in April for allegedly attempting to extort nude pictures from 15 women, has been released on bail after a month in federal custody, according to the Associated Press.
Savader was arrested by FBI agents at his parents’ Great Neck Gardens home on allegations that he sent anonymous text messages to 15 women over the course of 10 months, threatening to release nude pictures of the women unless they sent him additional naked photographs. He was transferred to federal custody in Michigan, where the victim who first reported the alleged extortion attended a university, and a federal judge authorized his release on Friday.
Victims resided in Detroit, Washington, D.C., and Long Island, according to an FBI press release – among them, former classmates of Savader’s from when he attended Great Neck North High School.
The investigation began when the first victim, a college student in Michigan and Great Neck native, told local police that she had received text messages starting on Sept. 30, 2012 demanding nude pictures and threatening to send naked photographs of the victim to her friends and family.
A criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Michigan alleged that Savader sent the victim a link to nude photographs of herself on an image-sharing Web site. The victim told police that those images had been stored in her personal e-mail account.
Savader’s family declined to comment in April, but Savader’s attorney Michael Shosnick told the New York Daily News “I’ve known Adam his entire life and he has never behaved in a way that would lead me to believe these allegations are true.”
Savader’s internet presence shows a man fast on the rise in conservative circles.
His Twitter account, which has more than 17,000 followers, identifies him as formerly Paul Ryan’s sole intern for the 2012 presidential campaign and a former Newt Gingrich campaign staffer. Savader’s Facebook page contains pictures of the young man, clean cut and wearing glasses, posing with Ryan, Romney and Gingrich.
Savader allegedly identified himself as ‘John Smith’ in the text messages to the Great Neck native, which the victim turned over to local police.
“Smith knew the names of her parents and displayed a Facebook picture of her mother to demonstrate his knowledge of her family,” alleged the criminal complaint. “Victim 1 said that she felt frightened and terrorized by his comments.”
The complaint says that further investigation identified 14 other potential victims.
Jake Wolf, who served as chairman of the George Washington University Republican Club when Savader joined the group following his transfer to the school in the fall of 2010, told Blank Slate Media in early May that Savader was passionate about politics, to the point of alienating other Republican activists at George Washington.
“I would describe him as a very eager kid who definitely wanted to kind of impress, I would say, with his knowledge and connection to political figures,” Wolf said. “Some people put politics as the pinnacle of society, the highest you can strive to be, and he was certainly one of those people. Politics came before everything.”
If convicted of the internet extortion and cyber stalking charged filed against him, Savader could face up to five years in prison.
