BUST TWO - OFFWORLD BBS SEIZED IN ST.LOUIS
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Joey Jay operated one of the more popular bulletin board systems in the St.
Louis area. Offworld BBS operated on 32 telephone lines at (314)579-0700
using the DLX software popular among real-time chat systems. It gained quite
a following as a local chat system. Jay, 28 years old, operated the system
from the basement of his fathers home in Chesterfield Missouri. Some 4300
local callers frequented the system.

On Friday evening, January 15th, at about 8:52 PM CST, the FBI served a
search warrant and seized six computer systems, modems, all tape backups, -
some $40,000 worth of computer hardware and software in all - on suspicion of
interstate distribution of child pornography and images containing
bestiality.

According to Jay, there were images occasionally uploaded to the board as
file attachments on private e-mail between callers. When he would detect
them, he did delete them as a matter of practice and kick the caller off the
system. He routinely tossed them into a SHREDME directory for later deletion
with Norton's WIPE utility. He acknowledges that there were some questionable
images in the SHREDME directory when the computer equipment was seized and
notes he's not certain what was on the BBS as he had just returned from a
week of snowboarding in Colorado when the raid occurred. He did maintain a
regular file directory containing images of bestiality and was unaware it was
against the law to do so.

In addition to the equipment seizure, the FBI alluded to the fact that if the
system came back up, they could, under law, seize Jay's father's house. His
father asked Jay to move out of the premises.

About 100 angry Offworld users gathered the following Monday at a support
rally. Jay is receiving contributions of equipment and money to get the
system back online and plans to do so soon. He has a one line message system
up at the old number now. Jay originally started Offworld in Los Angeles
where it operated from February of 1984 until June of 1992, when he moved it
to the St. Louis area. He has retained Arthur Margulas, an ex-FBI agent and
federal crime attorney practicing in St. Louis to represent him, and has been
in close contact with Mike Godwin of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.