An American staffer at the United States Embassy in London has been accused of running a sextortion scheme—amazingly, primarily from his heavily monitored, government-owned work computer. Despite this, the embassy’s network security protocol apparently failed to flag the man’s behavior.

The suspect, Michael C. Ford, was arrested at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport on May 17 as he was flying back to London with his wife and son. The criminal complaint against him was unsealed the following day.

On Thursday, a federal judge in Atlanta set Ford’s bond at $50,000, despite the impassioned pleas by prosecutors for no bond at all, and ordered him to remain under house arrest in his own home in nearby Dunwoody, Georgia.

Ford faces federal charges of stalking, extortion, and computer fraud, among others. To be clear, he is not accused of extorting money. During his detention hearing, according to the Atlanta Constitution-Journal, the native Georgian is suspected of harassing hundreds of women, primarily university students.

From the spammer playbook

According to the affidavit written by Eric Kasik, a special agent of the Department of State Diplomatic Security Service, Ford would write to women, saying he had obtained nude photographs of that victim. This was the case for one woman, dubbed “Jane Doe One,” an 18-year-old woman in Kentucky.

As the affidavit states:

[Ford, masquerading as “talent scout David Anderson”] then demanded that Jane Doe One take videos of "other girls" and "sexy girls" who were undressing in changing rooms at pools, gyms, and clothing stores, and then give the videos to him. The target threatened Jane Doe One that, if she did not send him the demanded videos, he would post the sexually explicit photographs of Jane Doe One widely online, along with Jane Doe One's actual name and address, which he listed in the e-mail message. He also threatened to e-mail the photographs to several of Jane Doe One's acquaintances, which he listed by first name and last name and, in one case, included a phone number.

The affidavit also describes how Ford would allegedly use phishing techniques common to spammers as a way to convince Gmail users into giving up their passwords.

For example, on or about March 20, 2015, the target, using the Google e-mail account Accounts Deletion "YYYYYYY3@gmail.com," sent Jane Doe Two an e-mail message to her Google e-mail account, with the subject line in the header reading: "Goodbye, Your Email Account is Scheduled to Be Deleted." The body of the e-mail stated that "We have received your request to delete your Google account. The request details are as follows: March 20, 2015 2:33 AM PDT<> IP address [Listing numbers]. The deletion process may take up to 96 hours to complete.

When Jane Doe Two fell for this and provided the password, Ford seemingly easily found compromising photos in her e-mail and threatened to send them to her parents, one of whom is described as “a well-known executive of a large, multinational company headquartered in Chicago.”

Betrayed by a cubicle

Amazingly, Ford seems to have conducted at least some of his creeptastic actions from his own desk and his own State Department computer inside the embassy in London.

The affidavit continues:

In an attempt to identify which particular computer was assigned to the State Department IP addresses, I have spoken with DSS computer specialists, as well as State Department security personnel and Information Technology personnel. Those individuals have informed me that, by performing keyword searches using the suspect "talent scout" e-mail account, they identified the specific State Department computer that is located at a workstation cubicle located in the U.S. Embassy in London. Personnel from the U.S. Embassy in London told me that the only person who sits at that workstation cubicle and uses that computer is Michael C. Ford. FORD is a U.S. citizen who has worked as an Embassy employee in London since 2009. They confirmed that FORD has sat at that cubicle and used that computer since well before January 2015, when the target sent the e-mails to Jane Doe One.

According to the Journal-Constitution, Mona Sedky, a senior trial attorney who flew down from Washington, DC, for the hearing, told the court that a search of Ford’s computer “turned up a spreadsheet of 262 e-mail addresses,” presumed to be his victims. She also told the court that Ford confessed to the agents that arrested him, saying that he was “unable” to stop his behavior.

He previously was arrested in the United States for "peeping tom" behavior, and British authorities received a complaint about his "e-mail stalking" behavior, according to the affidavit.

Ford’s attorneys did not respond to Ars’ request for comment.