Up until about a week ago in football-crazed Katy, Nick Georgandis was kind of a big deal. The 36-year-old sportswriter covered Katy high school sports for over ten years at the Katy Times, and was described in a post on Ultimatekaty.com that has since apparently been taken down as "practically a household name." As of early last week, he served as both the sports editor and interim publisher for the Katy Times.
And now he has been abruptly fired.
Last Thursday, law enforcement officials in Katy seized his computers, searching for lewd pictures they say Georgandis received from young women who thought they were communicating with former Katy gridiron heroes Aundre Dean and Trent Hunter. (Dean is now at TCU; Hunter at Georgandis's alma mater Texas A&M)
From Georgandis's erstwhile employer, the Katy Times:
Jeff Kapche, detective on the case, said he is still conducting the forensic investigation into the computers.
Georgandis has not been arrested or charged, Kapche said.
The search warrant lists material to be seized as including comments posing as Aundre Dean and Trent Hunter, victims in the case, information about their personal lives and "obscene and disturbing things sexual in nature."
Other material sought in the warrant was a Web page in the victims' names and e-mails, text messages and photos impersonating the victims.
Trent Hunter's mother Elaine Hunter told Channel 39 that the lewd messages Georgandis allegedly sent in her son's name put her Hunter's scholarship in peril. "The school called that somebody had called Texas A&M and wanted him kicked out," she said.
While Georgandis has not yet been charged with a crime, he could be prosecuted for a third-degree felony under the new Internet spoofing law that recently snared a Friendswood woman who allegedly used a phony Craigslist ad to wreak vengeance on her former boss.
In a possibly related matter, Hair Balls dug up a personal from 1997 in which someone apparently unknowingly posting as "Nick Georgandis" poses as someone else in order to solicit horny gay guys for some unwitting and eventually angry third party.
