Update 01/16/23 5:50 p.m.
The Isabella mom accused of catfishing her daughter and another teen is heading to trial.
Last week, Kendra Licari was supposed to have a hearing to see if there was enough evidence for a trial, but it was waived.
So she will be bound over to circuit court for trial, barring a plea deal being made between now and then.
Licari is charged with two counts of stalking a minor, two counts of using a computer to commit a crime and one count of obstructing justice.
Her next court appearance has not yet been set.
The last update we had from this case was when a .
12/15/22 6:48 p.m.
Catfishing is when a person poses as somebody online to deceive another person, usually for romantic reasons.
Police in Isabella County are handling a catfishing case right now, one that the prosecutor says he has never seen before.
“When the case first came into our office, it was bizarre and almost hard to believe,” said David Barberi, Isabella County’s prosecutor.
The case started when a Beal City High School student complained to her parents about getting harassing messages, text messages, social media messages, up to 12 a day, for months. Her mother turned to the police to help find out what was going on, who was sending these messages. What the police found, was quite surprising.
The police report said Kendra Licari, had catfished and harassed her daughter and her daughter’s boyfriend.
“We’re talking about several hundreds of text messages, over 1,000 pages of discovery in the case,” said Barberi, “As it related to communications between the suspect and the victims in this matter.”
Licari is charged with five total crimes, mainly for stalking, as the messages went on for over a year and were unwanted.
“By and large it was mostly just harassing type text messages, demeaning, demoralizing, and just mean texts,” said Barberi.
According to the complaint, police say Licari used software to hide her location and several different numbers and area codes to appear to be other Beal City students sending the messages. Then Licari helped her daughter report to the police.
“If at any point, this became something they didn’t want to engage in or continue, they could’ve stopped,” said Barberi, “Rather than stop, they continued to snowball into this sophisticated plan, where they try to conceal their identity and throw the police off their tracks.”
Barberi said they may never find the reason for this all but the impact left the two victims distressed and broken.
“Someone else coined the term, it wasn’t myself, but they called it a version of ‘cyber munchausen syndrome,’” said Barberi, “In a sense that this seems to be the type of behavior where you’re making somebody feel bad or need you in their life because of this behavior.”
Licari is back in court for an official arraignment on December 20th.
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