(Omaha, NE) -- A Bellevue man is sentenced to federal prison for cyberstalking.
On Wednesday, 48 year old Dennis Sryniawski was sentenced to twelve months and one day in prison, to be followed by three years of supervised release. Sryniawski must also pay a $10,000.00 fine.
A jury convicted Sryniawski of cyberstalking in June 2021, after a three-day jury trial. The U.S. Attorney's Office says this was the first cyberstalking conviction in the District of Nebraska. The federal cyberstalking statute prohibits using an electronic communication service to engage in a course of conduct with the intent to harass, intimidate or cause substantial emotional distress to a person or immediate family members, where the conduct did cause, attempt to cause or reasonably would be expected to cause such persons to experience substantial emotional distress.
Federal prosecutors says that evidence presented at trial showed that Sryniawski sent six emails on two different days in 2018 to a candidate for the Nebraska Legislature. The emails were sent from two different accounts. Prosecutors say one email was sent under Sryniawski’s name, but the others were sent under phony names. Sryniawski had previously been married to the candidate’s wife.
Prosecutors say the initial email contained personal details about the candidate’s wife and accusations concerning the candidate’s stepdaughter, and a later email included explicit photos purportedly of each. The emails asked the candidate to withdraw from the race and conveyed the message that, if he did not, the personal details and explicit photos of his wife and stepdaughter would be released.