During the rioting & looting in Philadelphia, a masked white woman was captured on-camera setting fire to a police car.
Now the FBI says they’ve identified and arrested the masked woman thanks to detective work that involved the online shopping site, Etsy, along with a host of other social media platforms.
Lore-Elisabeth Blumenthal, 33, faces two counts of felony arson, U.S. Attorney William McSwain’s office said in a news release. She is accused of setting the police cars alight during the first day of protests in Philadelphia...
A criminal complaint against Blumenthal shows federal agents tracking her down through social media, a t-shirt sale and her tattoos...
NBC 10 details how authorities were able to identify and track down Blumenthal:
FBI Special Agent Joseph Carpenter said in an affidavit of probable cause that he first saw Blumenthal holding a burning piece of a police barricade and shoving it into a Philadelphia Police Department SUV while watching aerial footage of the protests on the news. A video posted to Vimeo and sent to the FBI by the Department of Homeland Security also allegedly captured the moment.
Carpenter said he saw a picture of the torching posted to Instagram and asked the account-holder to provide more photos, through which he was able to make out a tattoo of a “peace” sign on Blumenthal’s forearm.
An amateur photographer later gave the FBI about 500 photos of the protest, the special agent said, through which they saw Blumenthal without a face covering and wearing a t-shirt that read “Keep the immigrants, deport the racists.”
The FBI then tracked the t-shirt to a seller on Etsy and saw a five-star review of it from someone with a public account who had a Philadelphia location. From the Etsy URL they determined the username as being “alleycatlore.”
After searching for the username online, the FBI found a Poshmaker user with the display name “lore-elisabeth.” They then found a website and a LinkedIn profile for someone with the name “Lore Elisabeth” who worked as a massage therapist. The website for the massage therapy company had videos, about four years old, showing a woman with the same “peace” sign tattoo on her forearm as the woman seen torching police cars.
The website also had a phone number for “Lore Elisabeth,” Carpenter said, which the FBI cross-checked with the Pennsylvania DMV to find a photo of Blumenthal and pinpoint her address.
Authorities followed up by issuing a grand jury subpoena to the Etsy seller. The subpoena showed “Keep the immigrants, deport the racists,” t-shirts shipped to Blumenthal’s address, according to Carpenter. The next day, a PennDOT search turned up a car registered to Blumenthal at the same address, the special agent said.
Blumenthal faces a maximum possible sentence of 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000. Prosecutors have filed a motion to detain Blumenthal pending trial.