A woman who pleaded guilty to defacing seven national parks, including Crater Lake in southern Oregon, has been banned from lands administered by the National Park Service, the U.S. Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management, and the Army Corps of Engineers, effectively barring her from setting foot on 20 percent of the country.

Over the course of 26 days in September and October 2014, Casey Nocket, a 23-year-old San Diego Resident, painted or drew on rock formations in national parks in Colorado, California, Utah and Oregon using markers and acrylic paint, the Department of Justice said in a press release.

And she might have gotten away with it too, if it hadn't been for some adept internet sleuths.

"This case illustrates the important role that the public can play in identifying and sharing evidence of illegal behavior in parks," said Charles Cuvelier, chief of law enforcement for the National Park Service. "It is clear that the public cares deeply for the special places that the National Park Service represents."

Nocket, for whatever reason, thought it pertinent to scrawl "Creepytings" beneath each of her drawings, which also happens to be the name of her now-defunct Tumblr blog and Instagram handle.

An outraged Reddit user posted a picture of the graffiti to the website and it was soon picked up by Modern Hiker, a blog run by Casey Schreiner, The Guardian Reported.

"That's when it really took off," he told the newspaper. "My site got slammed - and that's when people started to see if they could dig in on their own and see if there were any other instances of graffiti that was posted."

Steve Yu, an investigator for the National Parks Service, saw a post about some of Nocket's graffiti in Yosemite National Park and reached out to Schreiner who shared screenshots of Nocket's posts documenting the "art."

From there, it was just a matter of tracking her down, a task made easier by the signature she left next to each piece of graffiti.

She was charged with seven misdemeanor counts of injury or depredation against government property and pleaded guilty earlier this month to all seven counts, the Department of Justice said.

"The defendant's defacement of multiple rock formations showed a lack of respect for the law and our shared national treasures," Acting U.S. Attorney Talber said in a statement. "The National Park Service has worked hard to restore the rock formations to their natural state, completing clean-up efforts in five of the seven parks. They expect to complete cleanup efforts at Death Valley in the near future and at Crater Lake as weather permits."

In addition to being banned from nearly 550 million acres of federal lands, Nocket was also sentenced to 200 hours of community service and will have to pay restitution, though the exact amount has yet to be determined.

-- Kale Williams

kwilliams@oregonian.com

503-294-4048