Repeat offender, who once sent bomb threats to the Sheriff's Office, arrested on grand theft, larceny charges.
A Tavernier man with a history of committing computer-related crimes was arrested Thursday on grand theft and larceny charges,
Cole Peacock, 24, is accused of scheming to defraud a Tennessee company out of $3-million worth of computer equipment, and in the process obtaining $120,000 worth of equipment without paying for it, the Monroe County Sheriff’s office said Thursday.
Peacock is already on probation relating to grand theft charges from June 2013 when he reportedly deposited three fraudulent checks totaling $22,000 into his bank account to cover the costs racked up on a recently obtained credit card.
He violated probation several times in the interim. Deputies obtained a warrant and arrested Peacock on probation violation charges on May 17. He’s been in Monroe County jail since on a bond of $100,000.
Deputy Becky Herrin, spokeswoman for the Sheriff’s Office, said the chief executive officer of the Tennessee computer company, EnfoPoint Solutions, contacted a detective in January saying Peacock called him in November identifying himself as the CEO of a company called Data Point Systems – the same company name that was on the fraudulent checks in 2013.
Peacock told the EnfoPoint executive that he was starting an internet hub in Monroe County and needed equipment to set it up. He misleadingly said the company had board members, a tech department, an accounts payable department and support staff, Herrin said.
Cole reportedly said he would pay for the equipment via wire transfer after it arrived.
The Tennessee Company sent $120,000 worth of the equipment to a Miami address Peacock provided on Dec. 2.
Once the gear was shipped to a Miami storage unit, the firm never heard from Peacock again.
Herrin said the equipment has not been recovered.
Peacock is reportedly very talented with computers, and when deputies arrested him in 2013, there’s some indication he may have hacked into the department’s dispatch system called the Driver and Vehicle Identification Device.
During another investigation of Peacock, in February 2013, Peacock was arrested on computer-related charges after he showed Sheriff’s detectives how he could “spoof” the department’s emails. “Spoofing” is creation of email messages with a forged sender address.
He also pleaded guilty to sending bomb threats to the Sheriff’s Office by email in 2013. Peacock sent anonymous threatening emails that year to a detective investigating him for the fraudulent checks case. The emails appeared to be from other members of the Sheriff’s Office. Out of the 78 emails the detective received, four said “DEATH DEATH DOOM DOOM YOU HAVE A BOMB AT ONE OF YOU SUBSTATIONS BETTER FIND IT SOON.” Ten of them said “death death you will die.”
When deputies went to Peacock's Azalea Street home to arrest him on the fraudulent checks charges in June 2013, he reportedly threatened them with a syringe. When the deputies told him to drop the needle, he instead jabbed himself in the neck.
The deputies and detectives knocked away the syringe, but Peacock struggled with them as they tried to cuff him. During the scuffle, police say he grabbed a detective's sidearm holster.
This story was originally published June 2, 2016 at 4:45 PM with the headline "Repeat offender, who once sent bomb threats to the Sheriff's Office, arrested on grand theft, larceny charges.."