BOCA RATON, Fla. \u2014 A South Florida woman says a casual dating connection turned into a years-long ordeal involving fake numbers, a restraining order and disturbing messages sent to her underage daughter.<\/p>\n
The woman, who asked to be identified only as \u201cM,\u201d says she briefly dated a man named Richard Anderson who she met online in 2021.<\/p>\n
After his name appeared in an \u201cAre we dating the same guy?\u201d Facebook group, she said she told him about the post because she did not believe the accusations.<\/p>\n
Years later, \u2018M\u2019 says she was served with an injunction for stalking. Anderson accused her of sending thousands of messages from fake phone numbers. \u2018M\u2019 denied it, but says a judge initially ruled against her, forcing her to attend an evaluation and anger management classes.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought somebody was impersonating me, essentially,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
Davie police Detective Kenneth DeArmas later investigated the messages and found many came from TextNow numbers, gmail accounts and IP addresses tied to VPN\u2019s. Police said they could not connect \u2018M\u2019 to the accounts or locations.<\/p>\n
\u201cHer cellphone records did not ever put her there though. So, I was kind of like at a dead end \u2018cause I\u2019m like, well, her phone\u2019s never there,\u201d DeArmas said. <\/p>\n
Detectives eventually traced some IP addresses to a hotel in Boca Raton, where they say a woman named Gressa Dugan was living. According to police Dugan had a past connection to Anderson.<\/p>\n
Police say \u2018M\u2019s\u2019 underage daughter began receiving disturbing messages, including explicit altered images involving \u2018M\u2019s face. Investigators believe Anderson and Dugan worked together to target the girl.<\/p>\n
Now, Dugan and Anderson are facing aggravated stalking of a minor charges connected to the messages sent to \u2018M\u2019s daughter. Dugan remains in the Broward County Jail. <\/p>\n
\u2018M\u2019 says the restraining order was later reversed, but the experience has been traumatic.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis could happen to anyone,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
\ud83c\udfe0 News From Your Neighborhood<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 by WPLG Local10.com – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BOCA RATON, Fla. \u2014 A South Florida woman says a casual dating connection turned into a years-long ordeal…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":281664,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29],"class_list":["post-281663","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281663","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=281663"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281663\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/281664"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=281663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=281663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=281663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}