Woman found murdered after answering Craigslist ad!

October of 2007 in Minnesota, a young woman by the name of Katherine Ann Olson, age 24 was found dead and stuffed into the trunk of her car after answering an ad on Craigslist.

She was last seen the day before she was found, heading off to meet a couple she believed had just relocated to the area and in need of a babysitter. The couple had placed an ad on Craigslist advertising that they were seeking a nanny.

Shortly after the body was found the police arrested a 19 year old man they believe placed the phony nanny ad on Craigslist. The police declined to identify the suspect except to say that he worked at the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport where he was arrested shortly after Katherine’s body was found.

The police also found Olson’s purse in a garbage bin along with a blood soaked towel.

Like many other online shopping sites, Craigslist has a large share of illegal activity. Prostitutes have advertised their services there for a long time, and many other types of frauds are perpetuated through what seem at first glance like legitimate ads.

This was the first time Craigslist had ever been used for Murder, or at least the first time that the police became aware of.

This goes to show that you should never invite anyone who places an ad on Craigslist to meet with you privately or come to your home. There are so many dangerous people advertising on Craigslist that if you must deal with someone from an ad posted on Craigslist the police advice that you meet with them in a very public and a well lit place. Never meet someone from a Craigslist ad alone, always have someone accompany you. Many people have been getting mugged or assaulted when they meet someone from postings on Craigslist. Another thing to keep in mind is never to carry large amounts of cash, you will be an easy target this way. If someone places an ad on Craigslist and wants to be paid in cash and will meet you somewhere to complete the deal, that is a recipe for disaster. They will assault you, maybe rape you if you are a woman, and run off with the money. It has happened, read our other pages for more details.

There are so many crimes on Craigslist that many people are now appropriately calling it Crimeslist. Even though the Craigslist management perpetuates this idea of a community, it’s a load of B.S. Be very leery of this community. Treat everyone from this community at arms length. There are so many scams on Craigslist that it will take several pages for us to detail them all. What type of community does this to it’s members? Don’t be fooled into a false sense of security and wind up like Katherine Ann Olson. Who? The girl that was killed! You forgot already?!

Craigslist being blocked for Security Issues!

Apparently for some time now COX Internet has been blocking Craigslist from it’s users. If you have COX internet service you either can’t get on to Craigslist or it’s a hit or miss situation. It seems that COX has been using some new security software by a company called Authentium which considers Craigslist to be a security risk. The position from COX is not that they are blocking Craigslist on purpose, just that Craigslist has major issues with fraud and spam and COX is doing it’s best to prevent that type of problem from reaching it’s users. In this day and age with cyber crime being as great as it is, this should be considered a good thing.

The people at Craigslist are not happy about this since they are experiencing similar problems with other companies such as SBC, Yahoo , BT Internet and Telcos. It seems that all these companies are beefing up their security suites to better serve their customers, and Craigslist is high on he list of trouble maker sites.

The people at Craigslist take the attitude that these companies are targeting Craigslist unfairly and that they are going against net neutrality. They claim they have contacted these companies to have them stop blocking Craigslist but the companies in question have been unresponsive. Well, maybe now the people at Craigslist will see what it feels like to be blocked and ghosted. It’s easy to blame others for what goes wrong but it’s harder to look at ones self and make appropriate corrections. The problems that I see within Craigslist exist within many companies, especially internet companies. They loose touch with the real people and they exist in a cocoon. They only see their goals, their problems and their points of view. They don’t see anything wrong when they block or ban users, but when more powerful entities do it to them then it’s wrong. All Craigslist really does is attempt to brainwash everyone into believing that they are a nonprofit company out to help the little guy post his/her ads on the internet for free. That’s a total load of BS. Did you know that Craigslist makes over $20 million a year in revenue? Yes, that’s right, I’ll explain that in another article.

There’s an old saying that says “What goes around comes around.” Well Craigslist, it’s coming around! Instead of making your pages more secure, and protecting your readers, you haven’t. You allow criminals and scammers to wander freely among your pages taking advantage of the unsuspecting innocent readers. On the other hand you have plenty of time to pick off the few legitimate people who are actually trying to use your site to advertise their services. Instead of behaving like a major organization and attempting to run a proper classifieds section with proper oversight and checks and balances, NO! You have chosen to pocket the profits and just let the community take down whomever they find to be offensive. This leading to large amounts of people using this feature for their own personal advantage. In fact if you read the forums at Craigslist you will find countless posts where Craigslist clearly indicates that “it is NOT meant as a means of advertising”. They want to ride the middle ground between saying that they are a “free classifieds page”, to they are “not really meant for advertising purposes”. You can’t have it both ways just picking which way is most convenient for you at the given time Craigslist!

Craigslist has gained popularity in the past few years, but unless they make some major changes, they will soon become a distant memory as mainstream internet companies find out how ineffective Craigslist really is at preventing scams, fraud, and crimes against their users. A day is coming soon where most of the posters on Craigslist will only be scammers because legitimate businesses will not want their good names associated with Craigslist. Craigslist is fast becoming Crimeslist! Just how Craigslist can block, they too can be blocked!

The Craigslist Community - A Bunch of Crazies!

The Craigslist so called community behaves more like a pack of rabid animals than a community. With communities like this, who needs enemies? Let me clarify something, when I say the ‘community’, I’m not referring to the average person who posts a product or service and does nothing more than that. When I say ‘Craigslist community’, I’m referring to the crazy people that behave as if they were Craig Newmark, or as if they owned Craigslist. The brown nosing loonies that go overboard in their attachment to a person, place or thing. Unfortunately there are crazy fans of everything in this world, but they are treated as crazies. Craigslist on the other hand gives these crazies more power than they should have. By allowing the community to flag anything that they find objectionable, people get a rush of power and abuse this privilege. They begin to think they are a part of something special and they get an unnatural attachment to it. To make matters worse, instead of Craigslist having some sort of review or control over this, they don’t. Posts that are flagged, and get deleted without any staff revue.

This leads to a bunch of crazies running around flagging posts that have absolutely nothing wrong or objectionable about them. The Craigslist staff argues in their Q&A section that the flagging system is a necessary feature because they don’t have the manpower to check each and every post for abuse. Sorry, but that just doesn’t wash as far as I’m concerned. They certainly seem to have enough time on their hands to single out certain posts to be prevented from appearing when they want to, but they don’t for other things. Read the section about ‘Ghosting’ to find out more. The community doesn’t seem to have any problems with prostitutes and scammers posting on Craigslist, but if you make a post like “Cheapest prices in town!” you’ll get flagged because someone thinks that is not the right thing to say.

I give you that last comment from real life experience. I used to post a service on Craigslist and I used to post in my ads that I guaranteed the lowest prices. I actually had my posts flagged and had angry members of the community insult me because I was supposedly making the rest of the advertisers in my field look like cheats for charging too much. Whatever happened to freedom of speech? It doesn’t seem to exist on Craigslist. I complained to the Craigslist staff about my posts being flagged inappropriately and got only cryptic responses. In other words they just didn’t give a rats behind.

I’m sure you have already guessed about the next huge problem with flagging abuse and no oversight. Aside from the loonies, there are the smart folks out there that want to corner the market in what they are advertising for. In other words, lets say you are a tree trimmer on Tucson Arizona. Maybe there aren’t many trees around in the dessert so you want to make certain you get as much of the Craigslist business as possible. What do you do? You simply start flagging down all your competitors. It’s as easy as that. If you want to corner your market, you start flagging every body else and your posts will be the only ones that appear. There are hundreds of complaints about this in the support forums, but no one want to hear about it. They all get red numbers next to their posts basically telling them to stop complaining. I know that Craigslist claims it’s not that easy to flag posts. Don’t you believe it. I have seen posts disappear in under 5 minutes. If it was hard it wouldn’t happen that quickly.

Why don’t my posts show up on Craigslist?

For those of you not familiar with the changes that have taken place on Craigslist over the years, you may not be familiar with this term. ‘Ghosting’ is the term applied to when you make a post on Craigslist, and the system tells you that your post has been published but your post never appears on the front page of Craigslist. The system gives you a post ID and a URL and you can see your post if you put the post’s URL in your browser, but unfortunately no one else will be able to see it because it will never appear on the front page. Your post becomes like a ghost wandering the back halls of Craigslist aimlessly looking for someone to look at it, but no one can see it. It’s a sneaky way they found to get rid of people they don’t want posting on Craigslist. So how do you keep your posts free from ghosting? Keep reading!

Before ghosting, every post you made would show up on the front page of Craigslist. Every time your post was flagged you would get a courtesy email telling you that they were sorry that your message got flagged. If your message was removed by the Craigslist staff, you would not get an email about it. Your post would simply disappear without any warning. People eventually got wise to what was happening and would keep an eye on their emails. Flagging became such a huge problem (and still is) that people would have to make multiple posts, or constantly check their emails just to keep their posts active. After a while Craigslist realized what was happening and instead of doing something productive or useful to solve the problem, they decided to so something sneaky and underhanded. They decided to just Ghost anybody that they had the slightest inkling would be trouble. Some of you might think this is perfectly fair. After all what’s wrong with getting rid of trouble makers? The problem is that this is applied indiscriminately to just about anyone. A 70 year old granny can make a post selling her delicious cookies and have her post ghosted for no reason at all. While a prostitute can make an elicit sexual offer and that post doesn’t get ghosted.

The staff at Craigslist operates with no rhyme or reason. Don’t bother trying to figure out why they do it, just accept that it will happen. Don’t bother asking them why your perfectly innocent post got ghosted because they will either not respond, or they will give you some BS answer about it has to do with bandwidth or some nonsense like that. They have ready made answers to pacify the gullible.

You can get on Craigslist any day of the week and you can find lots of spammers, people making multiple posts within the 48hour time period that the TOS says you have to allow between posts, and they don’t get ghosted. You go ahead and try making two posts in a row and you’ll be banned for life. No warnings, no review process, just BANNED!

Another way to get ghosted it to get flagged. Just like I discussed in another post, you can get fagged by a competitor just trying to beat out all the competition. So you get flagged, you MUST be a trouble maker, and EVERY post you make from that moment on will get ghosted.

So do we let Craigslist get away with this? Hell NO! I’ll tell you some tried and true methods I have found to get around their underhanded Nazi, fascist tactics. It will mean a bit of work, but for those of you that don’t like being pushed around and don’t appreciate some jerks in this world trampling all over your right to free speech, you’ll find it’s worth it.

First of all there are lots of free services on the internet, I suggest you use them. Free emails are especially useful. Get a free email account and use that to get your publishing email. There are many emails that self destruct after a few hours, use those. Don’t bother keeping an email account for too long or they’ll get wise to you.

If you advertise a phone number in your ad, use a cell phone. Many companies will allow you to change your number every so often. There are also disposable phone numbers that you can change frequently.

If you advertise a web site or have the post send customers to your website use free websites and change your address frequently. Use free subdomains, and use URL redirecting sites. That way you can have many different web addresses but they all go to the same place.

When you log in to make a post on Craigslist use a proxy server. Change your IP often. Change computers if you can. Clear all your cookies and Java script. Change the referrers in your browser to 1.

Keep checking on your posts and if they don’t show up you know you’ve been ghosted and it’s time to change any of the above. Change the name you use. Change the wording. Be creative. Copy what other people post.

You do all of these things and you will be able to keep posting on Craigslist and they will NEVER be able to ghost you. Every time one thing fails, move on to another. Keep them on their toes, and make them work at it. The problem is most people just give in, and that’s what they are counting on. If you all fight back, they won’t be able to play games like that with your posts. I’ll keep updating this information every time I learn something new.

I can tell you that I have been banned many times from Craigslist and I still am able to make posts there today by using these techniques. I wasn’t banned for being a trouble maker in the traditional sense of the word. I was banned because competitors didn’t like that I had lower prices than they did, and I was getting flagged. To make matters worse I actually wrote complaints to the Craigslist staff and to Craig Newmark himself. That pissed them off! So instead of helping me they banned me. Nice aren’t they! So I decided to share my secrets with everyone.

Selling Illegal Drugs on Craigslist

It’s amazing to me how many people in this world use drugs. Yes, I am one of the few that has never used drugs and can easily point the finger at those that do. I find that there are so many more things to do in this world than get high, that it just is incomprehensible to me why anyone would get high, or stoned. Some of the stuff I have heard about drugs just boggles my mind. The other day I was listening to this woman talking about when she got high she suddenly saw her lunch (a burrito) sprout legs and arms and try to attack her. That gives a whole new meaning to Mexican food being hard to stomach!

It’s no surprise that drugs would wind up on Craigslist. In some cases it is disguised and in some cases the individual doing the selling was obviously consuming the merchandise. In a recent article the Associated Press reported that a Stamford Connecticut man advertised on Craigslist selling Marijuana. Police said that Steven Zahorsky, age 24 posted for “Mary Jane in Fairfield County”. In the ad the man offered a half ounce of “A” grade marijuana for $220. He also offered “B” grade marijuana for $160. (Sounds like a real bargain.)

The police spotted the ad (like it was really well hidden) and responded posing as a painting crew wanting to buy some drugs to get high during their break. (The moron Zahorsky actually fell for this.)

Zahorsky allegedly agreed to sell three quarters of an ounce of marijuana to the undercover police officers when he met with them at a rest stop on interstate 95. He agreed to meet them at a McDonalds to complete the transaction. (Sounds like a perfect place since I understand you get the munchies after you get high.)

Zahorsky allegedly met with the police officers and took $320 in cash in exchange for the marijuana. (Not bad for a few minutes work, or lack of work. Who says crime doesn’t pay?)

(Obviously this guy when the cops slapped the cuffs on him.) As is to be expected Zahorsky said he was at McDonalds to eat and had no idea why the officers were arresting him. (Like I never saw that bag of grass before in my life dude.) The police found the $320 on Zahorsky, and the undercover officers number on his cell phone. To make matters worse, when the police arrived at Zahorsky’s apartment they found three bags of marijuana, one bag of hallucinogenic mushrooms, along with a shotgun, ammunition and a digital scale. (Like I’ve been framed dude, I never saw none of that stuff till right now.) Zahorsky was charged with several drug charges and released on $10,000 bail. He is due back in Stamford Superior court on Feb 13. (I’m sure he’ll be there as the up standing citizen he is. On the other hand he probably already vacated his apartment and is selling drugs in another state.) On a personal note I just want to say to Zahorsky, in case you are reading this blog, I believe you man, the cops were definitely just picking on you. (Yeah right!)

The moral of the story is “Don’t be stupid enough to post a public ad on Craigslist or any other advertising media trying to sell illegal drugs.” Drug dealers have to stay in the shadowy underbelly of society or risk being squashed like the roaches that they are under the big foot of law enforcement agencies.

Don’t do drugs, get a life!

Problems with Craigslist: Bad Management and Staff

Let’s start off with the management and staff. I haven’t met them personally so this is simply one persons opinion formulated by his dealings with them. To me they seem to be a bunch of geeks and nerds who couldn’t get any attention or dates in High School and are now exacting their revenge on the rest of humanity through their little community called Craigslist. They won’t give you any assistance or guidelines in relation to posting but if you make a mistake or infraction, you’ll be banned for life. Their TOS sounds like a really good plan, unfortunately they only apply it when it’s convenient for them. The support forums are really a joke, for the simple reason that all the staff does is sit back and watch all the little people posting their problems on the forums, yet they wont get involved or post answers. Nope, they clearly state that the forums are for ‘Users to help other users’. So you really don’t know if the information your getting is right or wrong, and the staff won’t chime in with any help. They remind me of a cartoon of a maniacal mad scientist sitting back high atop a hillside castle looking down on the poor peasants and laughing maniacally at the crazy schemes that he’s cooking up to bring down upon them. They’ll get their revenge upon us normal people yet! When not staring at the computer monitors they probably sit around their cubicles playing with their Dungeons and Dragons dolls. Sorry, my mistake, they’re called ‘action figures’.

To make things worse, the Support Forums have a rating system built in. A way of bashing you over the head if they don’t like what you say. Any post that is made in the support forum has some little numbers next to it. These numbers represent rankings of what the ‘Community’ thinks of your post. The numbers will be green and with a plus sign if people like what you said, and will be RED with a minus sign if they don’t like what you said. The funny thing I have noticed is that only brown nosing comments get green numbers while other posts that are making suggestions for improvements get red numbers. If you post “I love Craigslist just as it is.” you’ll get a huge plus rating.

Craigslist doesn’t openly list information on how to get a hold of a real human, but if you do some really careful searching, you can find some contact information. If you contact them because you have a problem, they will either give you a cryptic response or not respond at all. I guess you could say that from their customer service you get exactly what you pay for, NOTHING!

They act like a click of small minded individuals who haven’t grown past their childhood problems and are still resentful of the world around them. I must blame both management and staff, because these problems seem systemic, and they carry through the entire organization (19 employees as I understand). As with any company on this planet, you have to judge them by their actions and their customer service, or lack of it.

For those of you who find posting on Craigslist interesting, important or profitable, I have created this website to keep everyone informed about all the things that happen behind the scenes at Craigslist that they don’t want you to know about. Yes, All the Dirty Little Secrets of Craigslist. For those of you who may not know, let’s start off with what is Craigslist?

Craigslist is an online, (so called) free internet advertising site ( or online free classifieds, if you will ) that was started a little over a decade ago by a geeky nerd who couldn’t get a date and hung around his mother’s house too much. The site itself (Craigslist) languished for a few years and really went no where until a few years ago some savvy investors decided to plug some money into it. Some people actually thought it had potential. It is actually a reasonably good idea, unfortunately it is poorly run and managed. So anyway, like I was saying a few investors plugged some money into the Craigslist website and through some clever marketing they made Craigslist more popular.

The entire marketing scheme behind Craigslist dates back to the old hippie days of the 1960’s. They even utilize the old PEACE symbol as their logo. Craigslist likes to propagate this idea that they are here for the people and by the people. That’s where the whole community thing comes from. The whole thing about Craigslist just being there for the people and by the people is a total load anyway. Craigslist is there to make money for the corporate managers. The staff at Craigslist likes to push the community idea because it makes their users do the work of the staffers for free. Free labor, you gotta love it! You’ll learn more about that later.

Yes, they advertise Craigslist, and the whole buzz around Craigslist, is that it’s free, but it actually isn’t, not completely. For some types of ads you have to pay. So this whole free notion is more or less a marketing ploy. Even though the company bears the name of Craig, Craig Newmark has taken a lesser role in the company over the years. Maybe top management thinks geeks just aren’t good at marketing.

So you go on Craigslist and post your products or services for sale, you find someone interested in what you have to offer and everyone ends up happy right? Well, maybe in theory but not in practice. There are so many things wrong with Craigslist itself and the entire concept, that it will take many posts to dissect the problems and elucidate on them properly. I am writing this blog to enlighten people about the problems and dangers of Craigslist so they can better understand and work with it as opposed to many people who are being hurt by it. You are welcome to post your comments in response to any of my postings, just keep it clean. Unlike Craigslist, I promise I will post each and every comment you make.