• June 9, 2011 06:13pm EST
• 3 Comments

Man Turns Tables on Ex-Wife's Fake Facebook Ploy

By Damon Poeter

An Indiana woman embroiled in a custody battle created a fake Facebook profile to dupe her ex-husband into revealing damaging information and thought she hit the jackpot when he admitted that he was tracking her with a GPS device he'd installed in her car.
But 29-year-old Angela Voelkert's victory over her ex, 38-year-old David Voelkert, was short-lived. Federal prosecutors on Thursday dropped charges against David Voelkert that stemmed from his ex-wife's creation of 17-year-old "Jessica Studebaker" on Facebook and the revealing things he told his new Facebook "friend" in May.
Angela Voelkert used a photo of an unknown teenage girl to invent a Facebook profile in May that she used to attempt to get dirt on her ex, according to court documents obtained by The Smoking Gun.
Angela Voelkert went so far as to enlist a friend to compose messages to her ex, fearing that he would recognize her writing style. At first, the ploy seemed to be paying off.
Within days of friending Jessica Studebaker, David Voelkert was telling his new "friend" about his ex-wife and their children, even telling her that once his court battle with Angela Voelkert concluded, he "planned to move somewhere warm with his kids."
Angela Voelkert got what she thought was a smoking gun on May 31, when David Voelkert told Jessica Studebaker that he had secretly installed a GPS tracker on his ex-wife's van. Later, he apparently had second thoughts about taking Studebaker into his confidence, asking her to delete the message.
The FBI arrested David Voelkert last week on two felony charges and he spent four days in custody. But prosecutors dropped those charges when Voelkert convinced them that he had just been playing along with his ex-wife's ruse and had known it was a scam all along.