A former Chicago resident who publicly boasted about paying social media followers to photograph his children and ex-partner in violation of a restraining order was arrested on fraud charges in Florida last week.
Micah Berkley, 41, had outstanding warrants in Cook County, Miami, and Palm Beach County, Florida, when he was arrested, according to the Miami-Dade Police Department. He is being held without bond pending an extradition hearing later this month, according to records from the Miami-Dade County Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
According to law enforcement documents, he is facing extradition to Palm Beach and Cook counties. It’s unclear which jurisdiction will try to address its legal issues with him first, but both Illinois and Florida officials said the criminal case in Palm Beach will most likely take precedent.
Berkley, a computer whiz with a large social media following, was featured in a recent Chicago Tribune story about cyberstalking and electronic harassment after admitting to paying strangers to take photos and videos of his twin daughters and their mother, Dominique Ward, despite a restraining order prohibiting him from harassing or intimidating them.
He told the Tribune that he believed he had a First Amendment right to solicit the images and had spent approximately $6,000 for them in the previous two years. He described it as “technological warfare” to combat custody and child support decisions that did not go his way.
The Tribune could not independently confirm that he had paid that much for the photographs. His social media posts, however, revealed that he had others following Ward at her home while shopping at Target, and even at the daughters’ school.
“I hear she’s scared,” Berkley stated earlier this year. “She should be afraid. She should feel afraid. I want her to be concerned about who’s waiting on the corner whenever she walks outdoors.”
Unrelated to Berkley’s Facebook behavior, a Cook County judge issued a bodily attachment for him earlier this year, authorizing his detention due to more than $50,000 in unpaid child support, according to court records. These orders are comparable to bench warrants, although they are rarely implemented in civil lawsuits involving people who live out of state.
The court order, along with a video posted by Berkley of a virtual court hearing in violation of state law, allowed the Cook County sheriff’s office to intervene in Ward’s case after the Chicago Police Department, the FBI, and local prosecutors said they couldn’t do anything about his social media posts. Though sheriff’s detectives are normally not involved in out-of-state child support cases, worries about Ward’s safety influenced their decision to begin a case, according to a spokeswoman.
“It was concerning,” Cook County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Matthew Walberg stated. “But there were other reasons to go and pursue the individual.”
Cook County sheriff’s detectives had been working with their Miami-Dade counterparts since March to locate Berkley, who also had an outstanding warrant in Miami for allegedly failing to return a rental car and another in Palm Beach County on allegations that he assumed the identity of an Ohio man with a similar name, according to records. His social media posts are not mentioned in any of the arrest paperwork released late last week.
Berkley also gave police a bogus name and birthdate when he was arrested on August 28.
It was unclear from court records whether Berkley had an attorney.
Ward and her attorney, Lindsay Nathan, spent several years attempting to persuade law police to investigate Berkley’s social media remarks. Both were relieved at Berkley’s arrest.
“He’s not in jail for anything related to the restraining order, but I’m glad he’s there,” Ward told the crowd. “I’ll get some peace for the first time in a very long time.”
Ward’s predicament demonstrated how difficult it is for victims of electronic harassment and cyberstalking to have their concerns heard.
According to public records, Ward has filed at least two electronic harassment reports with the Chicago Police Department since 2021. Officers informed her repeatedly that it would be difficult to show her ex-boyfriend was behind the computer when the remarks were sent, and that prosecutors would be hesitant to arrest him.
According to a Tribune investigation, the Chicago Police Department receives thousands of electronic harassment and cyberstalking reports each year, with more than one-third of them being domestic-related. In 2023, for example, more than 2,400 people in Chicago reported being electronically harassed or cyberstalked, with more than 800 claiming the alleged abuse was committed by someone with whom they have a familial or close relationship.
Only nine of the 824 domestic-related complaints filed last year, or slightly more than 1%, resulted in an arrest.
In 2023, the arrest rate is more than 15 times lower than for other domestic crimes, such as battery and order-of-protection violations. Only more regularly reported crimes involving deception, such as pickpocketing, illegal credit card use, and confidence games, had lower arrest rates.
Ward also urged Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, to make it easier to report and remove problematic accounts. Despite Ward’s repeated requests to have Berkley’s pages removed, the social media business did not deactivate his account until Gov. JB Pritzker’s administration interfered and asked that the pages be removed.
A Meta spokesperson said the company couldn’t discuss individual incidents, but Facebook does react to law enforcement requests to remove material.
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