Thomas Dorsher
FARGO (KFGO/KVRR) – The owner of a Florida trivia show company said he lost thousands of dollars when he bought software he claims was “junk” from an Oakes, N.D. man who has been charged with fraud in federal court.
Jim Casey, the host of Game Show Trivolution, said he is not involved in the case against Thomas Dorsher, but said his experience is similar to what the man known as Scammerblaster is being charged with.
Dorsher was arrested by the FBI Dec. 2 and has been charged with five crimes involving computer fraud and abuse, extortion, and harassment for his role in a conspiracy to levy threats at and launch computerized attacks on three Utah-based companies with the goal of overwhelming and disabling their servers and phone lines.
The indictment, which was filed in Utah, said Dorsher and another man issued threats and payment demands to the targeted companies. The men are also alleged to have harassed and doxxed employees of the targeted companies. Doxxing is the practice of publicly identifying or publishing private information about someone as a form of punishment or revenge.
The indictment, which was filed in Utah, claims Dorsher ran the criminal operation out of his basement in Oakes.
Casey said the software he bought for his gameshow from Dorsher in 2015 was faulty, outdated, and kept crashing.
“I got the equipment but it never truly worked like it was supposed to,” Casey said.
When he contacted Dorsher to resolve the problem, Casey said they had an argument over the phone.
“He was basically not giving me the support I needed and I ultimately had to cancel that show,” Casey said. “Unfortunately, because the Naples/Fort Myers area is a tight-knit community, I lost a lot of business. People would not work with me anymore because I had unreliable equipment.”
Casey said, in 2021, he tried to warn others in an online conversation to stay away from Dorsher after people discussed doing business with him. Casey said, when Dorsher found out, he called Casey’s business line, saying he will take the business down.
After that, Casey said his phone received more than 10,000 spam-calls in a two hour span, taking his business down for the day.
Casey called the Oakes police department, but was told that while they were aware of Dorsher, there was nothing they could do jurisdictionally.
During his initial appearance at the federal courthouse in Fargo, Dorsher called the charges against him “bogus.” In July of last year, the FCC proposed an over $116 million fine against Dorsher in a related and complex robocall “traffic-pumping” scheme.
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