WOLCOTT, Conn. — A woman in Wolcott claimed someone was repeatedly hacking her and someone else's phones and social media accounts, but years of state police investigations revealed that she fabricated the whole thing and that she was the one doing the hacking and targeting others.
Deborah Caloutas, 63, turned herself in to State Police on Wednesday on multiple cybercrime charges and for falsely reporting an incident regarding serious injury or death.
Caloutas made multiple complaints to Beacon Falls police between January 2021 and March 2022, saying that a hacker was threatening her and someone she lived with. She claimed that between 2019 and 2022, their cell phones, laptop and Facebook accounts were hacked and photos were extracted from those devices. The photos were then being sent back with threats edited on to them. Intimate photos of them were also uploaded to "fake" Facebook accounts.
One of the photos was edited with a message that read "Die You Will By Friday," investigators said.
When investigators processed Caloutas' phones and devices, they came across originals of the photos and edited copies of the photos. Investigators also found the Microsoft Paint program opened with one of the photos being edited, and the photo matched the clean and edited copies found on one of the iPhones, according to the arrest warrant.
The original and edited intimate photos that were uploaded to the Facebook accounts were also found on Caloutas' devices, the warrant states. She also accessed someone else's iCloud to obtain photos saved on the online database.
One of the people who thought they were being hacked also hired a private investigator to help, according to the arrest warrant. The private investigator eventually caught on that Caloutas was the one hacking and harassing others, according to state police.
When state police investigators, during an interview, showed Caloutas evidence she was the one hacking and harassing others, she said, "I don't know how to explain it."
Caloutas cost one person thousands of dollars after they had to replace their cell phone four times due to her hacking and harassment, the arrest warrant states.
She posted a $75,000 bond and is scheduled to appear in court in November.
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