No evidence of a crime after racist image posted on Shiloh trustee account, police say
Police said they found no evidence of criminal wrongdoing in an investigation into whether a hacker posted a racist image on a Shiloh village trustee’s social media page in January.
Trustee Kurt Burrelsman said the Wednesday, Jan. 27 post on Nextdoor using a racist slur was a “malicious attack” and vowed to “get to the bottom” of the matter. He denied posting it himself, saying he didn’t have the technical know-how to use the neighborhood social media site, and would never post anything like that.
The post went viral that Wednesday night into Thursday morning. Nextdoor deleted the post and suspended the account immediately after it came to their attention, according to a company spokeswoman, but screenshots continued circulating.
Shiloh Police Chief Rich Wittenauer said he believes his department did as thorough of an investigation as possible, but could not find evidence a crime occurred.
“We were never given any evidence that there was a crime. The crime would’ve been his computer being hacked,” Wittenauer said. “We weren’t furnished with anything from Nextdoor.”
J.D. Dixon, founder and president of grassroots activist group Empire 13, said he believed police did their due diligence and found no evidence of hacking.
“They looked for it, they tried to find it and they couldn’t,” Dixon said.
Burrelsman said he stood by what he said in January.
“It’s been almost a year. The whole thing made my life miserable,” Burrelsman said.
What did the police say?
Wittenauer said Burrelsman and he talked at a village board meeting a few days prior to the racist post appearing. Burrelsman told the chief about a ransom email he had received.
The email contained his personal banking information and demanded $700 in Bitcoin, a type of cryptocurrency, according to the police report.
Burrelsman told Detective Chris Flynn about the ransom email during a Thursday, Jan. 28 interview about the racist post. He told police he deleted the email, according to records obtained through an open records request by the Belleville News-Democrat.
Detective Flynn asked Nextdoor for information about the post, and then sought the help of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the St. Clair County Sheriff’s Department, the U.S. Secret Service and the Illinois State Police. All declined to provide assistance.
On Friday, Jan. 29, two days after the post, Burrelsman returned to the Shiloh Police Department for an interview with Sergeant Kyle Bade.
Burrelsman said he didn’t know about the post until then-Mayor Jim Vernier and Wittenauer came to his house to alert him Thursday morning, according to the report. But then Burrelsman said he may have seen the post Wednesday night in an email notification from Nextdoor.
“I saw the words. It was so ridiculous I thought it was [expletive], or someone was pranking me,” Burrelsman told police. “I blew it off. I thought it was only on my page, or someone sent it to me and on my computer.”
Police asked Burrelsman if they could search his cell phone, and despite him needing it for work and saying “this is pissing me off,” he gave his phone to Bade. Another officer took the phone to the Fairview Heights Police Department so they could extract data from it.
Burrelsman also agreed to allow police to search his computer tower, but not his laptop, Wittenauer said in an email. Burrelsman gave the computer tower to police, but they were unable to extract the data “in a timely manner” and returned it to the trustee, the chief said.
Meantime, the police chief asked St. Clair County State’s Attorney James Gomric if he would order Nextdoor to share information on the post’s origin, which can be traced from what’s known as an IP address. Gomric declined, saying he did not see any evidence of a crime.
By Monday, Feb. 1, police had returned Burrelsman’s cell phone and began analyzing the data. Though Sergeant Bade sifted through data for seven hours, he did not find any evidence related to the racist post.
What did Nextdoor say?
Shiloh Village Clerk Brenda Kern asked Nextdoor for information on where the post might have originated, but they refused to provide an IP address without a legal order, according to the report. Nextdoor told Kern, “We also did explore the member account you referenced, and based on our findings we do not believe this member is responsible for posting the information you described.”
But Nextdoor went on to ask for a screenshot of the post to allow them to “investigate further,” according to the report. Detective Flynn received copies of the emails between Kern and the social media company, and he shared the screenshots with Nextdoor.
After Flynn sent the screenshots, Nextdoor reversed itself and “determined that the user Brent Burrelsman should be permanently banned,” according to the report. Flynn noted they wrote “Brent” instead of “Kurt.” Wittenauer said police never got clarification on why Nextdoor used the name Brent.
Burrelsman said Nextdoor did ban him, but wasn’t sure if they banned him permanently.
“They looked into their server and as far as they could tell, it came from my computer. So, unless I proved my innocence, I was banned,” Burrelsman said. “If that’s their attitude with it, I’m done them anyway.”
How did the investigation end?
Around March 12, Chief Wittenauer told Burrelsman on the phone that police found no evidence of a crime, but that they could still analyze data from his computer tower, according to the report. Burrelsman “was receptive to this,” the chief said.
After coordinating help to scan the computer’s data, the chief called Burrelsman again and told him they were ready to do the computer forensics. Burrelsman said he would get back to the chief when he was available.
Burrelsman contacted the chief more than a month later on April 26 and said he had time to give up his computer because tax season was over, according to the report. Burrelsman said some things had been deleted from the computer, but didn’t elaborate, Wittenauer noted in the report.
Because so much time had passed and because there was no evidence of a crime, police decided not to proceed with scanning the computer.
