B4 EZ M2 THE WASHINGTON POST.FRIDAY, JULY 31 , 2020
cording to the Facebook com-
ments.
The detective contacted the
poster, who interviewed with po-
lice for 30 minutes along with his
girlfriend — one of the alleged
victims. They provided social me-
dia communications with “Rebec-
ca Lattimore.”
The boyfriend admitted push-
ing Cooper to the ground outside
the restaurant and grabbing his
phone, according to court filings.
He told the detective that he did so
to try to delete any compromising
photos of his girlfriend — which
he did before tossing the phone
into the bushes. He agreed to take
the detective to it, according to the
man’s account in court filings and
an interview with The Washing-
ton Post. The boyfriend spoke on
the condition of anonymity to pro-
tect the identity of his girlfriend.
“It happened,” he said of his
girlfriend sending the photos to a
person she met online. “It was
what it was. But no one deserves to
be exploited like that.”
Locke kept digging and found
three more of Cooper’s alleged ex-
tortion targets, police said. The
case had made a 180 from Cooper’s
robbery report and on July 13,
Locke charged Cooper with seven
counts involving four victims.
That same day, Cooper posted a
$3,000 bond and was released.
Just two weeks later, according
to court filings, he tried to run his
scam again and was confronted by
another chivalrous boyfriend.
This man, the filings allege, held
Cooper at bay until p olice arrived.
[email protected]Two days later, a different coun-
ty detective was diving into what
he thought was a possible strong-
armed robbery outside a barbecue
restaurant in Germantown —
where parties had scattered by the
time police arrived. The purport-
ed victim, who identified himself
as Michael Cooper, called him.
In Cooper’s telling, the detec-
tive would write in a court affida-
vit, a stranger had come up from
behind, shoved him to the ground,
grabbed his cellphone and forced
Cooper to apply his fingerprint to
the screen to unlock it. And Coo-
per added something else: An ac-
complice of the cellphone thief
took a picture of him — pressed
against the pavement — and post-
ed it on Facebook.
The detective, Locke, dug into
the claim — found the photo on
Facebook — and was stunned by
what the man who posted it wrote
as a caption, according to court
records: “If anyone is following
this creep, block him. Threatening
girls by blackmailing them.”
In the comments section below,
friends asked the Facebook poster
for details. The man, according to
police and the boyfriend, then
gave the name Michael B. Cooper
— to which one of his friends
expressed shock.
“Michael?... Went to church
with this dude.... He was a good
kid and had a good heart. [I don’t
know] what went wrong but I
hope he figures this out cause
what he did — had it been me I
would’ve done way worse than
just exposing him on social media.
You know how I get down,” ac-amount of bravado,” Massari said.
“His behavior was escalating in a
dangerous direction.”
The first sign that someone was
running the scam in Montgomery
County, according to court rec-
ords, surfaced last month.
The corporate sales trainer, 29,
reported to police a bizarre se-
quence of events that began on
June 13 when she started commu-
nicating over Instagram and
Snapchat with someone she be-
lieved to be Rebecca Lattimore.
On June 14 and June 16, the wom-
an told police, she sent several
sexually explicit photos and vid-
eos of herself to the Instagram and
Snapchat accounts.
Six days later, the woman said,
“Rebecca Lattimore” wrote her
and said he was a man — and he
needed to meet with her for sex or
he’d strike back with the images,
according to court filings.
“I’m going to post all your pics
and vids u sent online, including
where you work, your phone num-
ber etc.,” police said the man
wrote.
He added a smiley-face emoji,
according to court filings, and
gave her a 5 p.m. deadline to com-
ply. He suggested she go to a hotel
room and place her dress outside
the door.
The woman tried to “block” the
person from further communica-
tions. He began texting her, police
said, using an Internet-based
“spoofing” technique to create the
illusion he had three different cell-
phone numbers. At that point, ac-
cording to court filings, the wom-
an went to the police.more consistent schedule for fam-
ilies,” Ferebee said. D.C. Public
Schools “is prepared to have daily
lessons to include social-emotion-
al development activities to en-
sure that students are well and we
continue to build our trusting re-
lationships with our students and
families.”
When asked if the city would
allow students who needed a
place to do their school work to
use classrooms for virtual learn-
ing — an idea that education lead-
ers have discussed — the mayor
said they would need adults to
supervise children to make that
happen.
“If we don’t have teachers who
want to come in-person, we would
have to find another set of adults
who want to come in-person,”
Bowser said. “And we will, if the
chancellor says that this is what
we need for our kids.”
While the union applauded the
Bowser administration’s decision
for virtual learning, some teach-
ers and staff criticized the mayor’s
suggestion that she would find
adults to staff classrooms if teach-
ers are unwilling to return.
Catrina Brown, a fourth- and
fifth-grade teacher at Noyes El-
ementary in Northeast Washing-
ton, said she was relieved by the
mayor’s decision. She lives in
Southeast Washington with her
75-year-old mother and her high-
school-age daughter, who attends
a D.C. school, and says Brown did
not feel safe returning to in-per-
son teaching.
Brown said she worked hard
reaching her students in the
spring, but still only 16 of her 50
students consistently showed up
to virtual class. She is hopeful,
though, that the attendance re-technology to participate in dis-
tance learning, and said that they
would make sure every student
had the necessary devices to fully
engage with their fall coursework.
The mayor’s announcement
does not apply to the city’s charter
sector, which educates nearly
50 percent of the city’s public
school students. Many charter
schools — including the city’s two
largest charter networks, KIPP
DC and Friendship Public Charter
School — have said they would
also go all-remote. A few charter
schools have said they will try to
bring in some students for class-
room instruction. Many private
schools have also said they will
begin the semester with students
in classrooms.
During the announcement, top
education officials laid out what
virtual learning would look like in
the fall — and depicted an aca-
demic day that was far more struc-
tured than it was in the spring.
Students across all grade levels
are expected to have live instruc-
tion each day. Preschoolers would
have 30 to 60 minutes per day,
which would include a morning
meeting, small-group activities
and a snack with their teacher.
Young elementary students
would have about two hours of
live instruction each day, and be-
ginning in third grade, students
would have between two and
three hours.
Middle and high school stu-
dents would have four to five
hours of live instruction each day.
Unlike the spring, school officials
have said that they will take at-
tendance each day.
“We are prepared to deliver a
SCHOOLS FROM B1
D.C. schools to be
online in 1st term
the option, she would not have
sent her two elementary-age chil-
dren back to school. Distance
learning was hard, Roderer said,
but she managed and doesn’t
want to risk the health of her kids’
teachers or that of her elderly
mother. Roderer, who is self-
employed and has scaled back her
work during the pandemic, said
she has offered to watch one of her
children’s classmates, whose
mother will be unable to guide her
through distance learning.
“I thought this was 100 percent
the right decision. We were not
planning on going back,” Roderer
said. “I basically did not do my
own work in the spring. I just
shepherded my kids from activity
to activity.”
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]— to get to class. Most of the city’s
public school students do not at-
tend their assigned neighborhood
school, with many traveling far
distances to attend charter and
traditional public schools outside
their neighborhoods.
Beginning Aug. 16, Metro
planned to start a phased increase
that would ultimately lead to serv-
ice of 90 percent of pre-pandemic
levels.
The agency said Thursday that
it will not pull back on its plans to
increase rail and bus service be-
cause of Bowser’s decision, but the
move will prompt Metro to skip
running some bus trips it sched-
ules just for the school system “as
opposed to regular route service,”
Metro spokesman Dan Stessel
said.
For parent Emily Roderer, the
mayor made the right call. If givenquirements in the fall will encour-
age more participation.
“It is important for me to teach
Black, Brown and poor children in
the nation’s capital,” Brown said.
“But you cannot tell me that you
will be able to ensure the safety of
myself as well as the safety of my
child.”
The effects of Bowser’s decision
Thursday will trickle down to
Metro, which announced this
month that it planned to more
than double rail and bus service
starting mid-August in anticipa-
tion of the possibility of D.C.
schools opening. Since mid-
March, the transit agency has
been running at about a third of
the level of normal service.
The District does not have a
school bus system, and students
rely on the city’s public transit
system — which they ride for freeJAHI CHIKWENDIU/THE WASHINGTON POST
Officers talk with Washington Teachers’ Union protesters Monday after they placed mock body bags
outside the D.C. Public Schools headquarters to warn against in-person teaching amid the pandemic.pinned Cooper down on a p arking
lot and said, “Give me one reason
why I shouldn’t mess you up.”
Photos weren’t released in that
incident. But in at least one of the
other of the cases, the nude images
did end up on a pornography site,
police said.
“I’m worried there are other
victims out there,” said Detective
Joshua Locke, who urged people
with information to call police.
“And they’ve been damaged by
him mentally and are too scared to
come forward.”
He said he has seen sextortion
cases before. But they’re generally
between people who know each
other or tied to a bitter divorce.
Cooper targeted smart, profes-
sional women he didn’t know,
Locke said, and used layers of du-
plicity to lure them.
And at one point, according to
court records, Cooper pretended
to be a robbery victim to apparent-
ly get out in front of the police
search for him.
“He’s incredibly intelligent,”
Locke said. “What he’s done is
incredibly cruel.”
Another detective working on
the case, Chris Massari, said
C ooper presents a risk because he
kept trying to pull the extortion
scheme even after he knew inves-
tigators were onto him.
“I think there was a certainwith “threatening to inflict emo-
tional distress” to obtain sex. It
was the third time they have
charged him with that offense
over the past two weeks.
“He keeps doing the same
thing,” prosecutor George Simms
said in Montgomery County Dis-
trict Court on Tuesday.
This time, Judge John Moffett
ordered Cooper to stay in jail with-
out the option of posting a bond.
“I’m going to hold him until we
get to the bottom of the case and
find out what’s going on,” the
judge said.
In the hearing, an attorney for
Cooper suggested he may need
mental health treatment. She
could not be reached for comment
after the hearing. Cooper is due
back in court Monday, according
to court filings.
Investigators said that while
pretending to be Rebecca Latti-
more, Cooper sometimes persuad-
ed the targeted women to send
nude photos by first sending them
nude images of a female. None of
the women engaged in sex acts
with Cooper. Some blocked him
from their online accounts. Two of
them had their boyfriends inter-
vene, according to court papers.
One of the boyfriends said he con-
fronted Cooper about the photos,
CHARGES FROM B1
Man posed as w oman in
extortion case, police say
BY MEAGAN FLYNNRep. Denver Riggleman
(R-Va.) says he is exploring a run
for Virginia governor in 2021,
potentially as an independent —
bucking the Republican Party
that last month rejected his bid
for reelection in favor of a
former county supervisor run-
ning as a “biblical conservative.”
Riggleman, who first revealed
his potential gubernatorial bid
in an interview on the Bloom-
berg p odcast “Sound On,” told
The Washington Post on
Wednesday that it will be the
subject of a serious discussion
with his family in the coming
months.
He said that
he has not
been one to
“kiss the ring”
of Republican
Party loyalists
and that vot-
ers may be
tired of tribal-
ism in politics
— an issue
that he said
has made it difficult for him to
present nuanced viewpoints in
his party.
Riggleman, who is serving his
first term in Congress and brief-
ly ran for governor in 2017, was
censured by local Republican
officials after he presided over a
same-sex wedding last year;
they questioned his support for
“traditional family values.”
Many delegates subsequently
chose to support Bob Good, a
former Campbell County super-
visor and Liberty University ath-
letics official, at the 5th District
nominating convention on June
14.
Riggleman said he would de-
cide whether to run, and under
what political affiliation, by
September or October. He said
the decision is complicated by
the fact that his distillery busi-
ness is booming and that he
welcomed two new grandchil-
dren recently.
“I think at this time people
are starting to think about third
parties, especially with the trib-
alism in politics today,” Riggle-
man said. “What I went through
was pretty interesting, and it
was also pretty brutal. I really
believe that people are looking
for new ideas outside the two-
party system, but saying that, I
also realize that running as a
Republican-minded independ-
ent is probably more realistic.”
Good will face off in Novem-
ber against Democrat Cameron
Webb, a physician focused on
social justice issues. The sur-
prise nomination of Good led
the Cook Political Report to
reclassify the 5th District race
from “likely Republican” to the
less-certain “leans Republican.”
Riggleman had objected to
the venue and setup of the
nominating convention, which
was held near Good’s home and
base of support but a long drive
away for many delegates sup-
porting Riggleman. He said
Wednesday that the convention
process has “destroyed the Re-
publican Party of Virginia,” al-
lowing “very small groups try-
ing to control everyone rather
than allowing everyone to par-
ticipate.”
“Obviously I’m not a Demo-
crat, but when you have a party
that’s been struggling like the
Republican Party of Virginia has
for the past 12 years, we should
probably question what’s going
on,” Riggleman said.
Should he decide to run, Rig-
gleman would join a crowded
field in what would likely be a
long-shot bid. Republicans
h aven’t won a statewide race
since 2009, and independent
candidates generally have an
uphill path without benefit of
party money or endorsements.
On the Democratic side, Vir-
ginia state Sen. Jennifer L. Mc-
Clellan (Richmond) and Del.
Jennifer D. Carroll Foy (Prince
William) have announced gu-
bernatorial bids, while former
governor Terry McAuliffe is con-
templating another run. Lt. Gov.
Justin Fairfax (D) has also said
he intends to seek the top job.
Republican state Sen. Aman-
da F. Chase, an outspoken sup-
porter of President Trump, is
running for governor as well.
Other potential GOP contenders
include Pete Snyder, a Northern
Virginia technology entrepre-
neur; and former state senator
Charles “Bill” Carrico, a retired
state trooper from Grayson
County, in the state’s far south-
west.
[email protected]VIRGINIARiggleman
considers
run for
governor
Rep. Denver
Rigglemantients in hospitals Thursday for
coronavirus-related complica-
tions, up from a low of 1,283
earlier this month. The regional
daily death toll has declined de-
spite the rise in cases.
The pandemic continues to
take an economic toll, with Labor
Department figures released
Thursday showing that residents
of D.C., Virginia and Maryland
filed 61,112 new jobless claims for
the week ending July 25. That is
up from 58,241 a week earlier.
Maryland and D.C. saw slight
drops in the number of unem-
ployment claims, while the num-
ber increased in Virginia. Mary-
landers filed 11,974 claims, and
D.C. residents filed 2,614. Virginia
accounted for the bulk of the
region’s claims, with 46,524 new
filings.
More than 1.5 million people
have filed for unemployment ben-
efits in the greater Washington
region since the start of the pan-
demic. Nationally, the economy
has shrunk dramatically in recent
months, marking the biggest de-
cline in more than seven decades.
[email protected]
[email protected]Rebecca Tan and Ovetta Wiggins
contributed to this report.and has become a hot spot in
Maryland. The county’s s even-
day average caseload has been at
least 180 each day this week, up
from about 50 new daily cases a
month ago.
D.C., Maryland and Virginia
reported 1,861 new cases Thurs-day, bringing the region’s total
number of cases to 188,138 since
the start of the pandemic. D.C.
reported 58 new cases and no
deaths; Maryland reported 892
cases and 10 deaths; and Virginia
reported 911 new cases and 16
deaths.
Infection numbers in the re-
gion have been increasing since
the start of July. The seven-day
average of new cases in Maryland,
Virginia and D.C. has hovered
near 2,000 in recent days, near
the average through much of May
during the pandemic’s peak.
Hospitalizations also have ris-
en in the region, with 2,029 pa-now,” Montgomery County
Health Officer Travis Gayles said.
“We need to see numbers shift,
not just for us, but across the
state.”
The county has avoided the
spikes reported in the Baltimore
region, where officials said Thurs-day that the health officer for
Baltimore County has tested posi-
tive for the virus.
Gregory Wm. Branch said he
was experiencing a mild cough
and minor voice loss when he
decided to get tested at a county
clinic. Branch is in self-isolation
and continuing to work from
home, said county spokesman
Sean Naron.
“While I do not know exactly
how I contracted the virus, this is
a stark reminder of how conta-
gious [it] can be,” Branch said in a
statement.
In recent weeks, Baltimore
County has seen a surge in casesed Maryland’s mandate for face
coverings, requiring residents
older than 5 to wear masks while
indoors in public spaces and out-
doors when social distancing is
not possible. He also warned
against travel to states with high
levels of infections, ordering resi-
dents to be tested and to quaran-
tine until they receive results.
D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser
(D) issued a similar mask man-
date last week and a stricter travel
advisory that requires self-quar-
antining for those arriving from
27 states.
In Virginia, officials on Tues-
day pulled back on some activities
that previously were allowed in
the hard-hit Hampton Roads
area. Gov. Ralph Northam (D)
announced early closing times for
restaurants while limiting the ca-
pacity for indoor dining, among
other restrictions.
Montgomery County officials
said Thursday that Maryland’s
largest jurisdiction will only con-
sider lifting more restrictions
when cases show signs of declin-
ing. The county’s daily infections
have increased in recent weeks,
going from a seven-day average of
about 70 in early July to more
than 100 this week.
“It’s a precarious situationwarned that residents need to
remain vigilant to avoid addition-
al restrictions.
Alsobrooks said compliance
teams have visited more than 200
businesses countywide to ensure
they are following guidelines on
masks and social distancing. She
said one business, a martial arts
facility that was not practicing
social distancing, was shut down.
She also said that at least one
private home — the Broadwater
mansion in Upper Marlboro —
has been barred from having par-
ties after complaints from neigh-
bors that hundreds were gather-
ing at pool parties.
“No more parties with hun-
dreds of people in attendance,”
she said, warning that those who
violate an order barring gather-
ings of more than 100 people
could be charged with a misde-
meanor.
The police department said in a
statement that officers were
called twice to the mansion this
past weekend and dispersed large
crowds. The estate is owned by
former state senator Tommie
Broadwater, who said Thursday
he wasn’t available to comment.
Hogan on Wednesday expand-
REGION FROM B1
Pr. George’s may crack down on gatherings a fter spike in cases
“It’s a precarious situation now.... We need to see
numbers shift, not just for us, but across the state.”
Travis Gayles, Montgomery County health officer