Mails

Six employees of Delaware County's domestic relations department were fired yesterday, weeks after they were suspended for exchanging pornographic e-mails on their workplace computers. The six, all unionized employees who worked as hearing or bench warrant officers, were fired for "inappropriate and unprofessional use of their computers on county time," said County Personnel Director Leonard Maloney. The six had been suspended without pay earlier this month after the messages were found on their terminals.

A Wissahickon High School teacher faces criminal charges for allegedly having sex last year in his pickup truck with a 17-year-old girl on the soccer team he was coaching. He's also charged in connection with sending sexually explicit e-mails and text messages to another student, police say. The teacher, Matthew Milleo, 35, was a soccer coach when he had sex with the girl, according to court documents. In April, he started sending the inappropriate e-mails and text messages to a 16-year-old sophomore, the documents say. The girl's friend alerted school officials who told police.

Monica Lewinsky sent Linda Tripp electronic mail in which the former White House intern talked about her alleged affair with President Clinton, Newsweek magazine reported in its latest issue. In the messages last year, Lewinsky referred to two neckties she said she had given Clinton as gifts and griped that the "Big Creep didn't even try to call me on V-Day (Valentine's Day)," the magazine said in its issue going on sale today. Clinton has vehemently denied allegations, under investigation by independent counsel Kenneth Starr, that he had an affair with Lewinsky and told her to lie about it. Tripp, who worked with Lewinsky at the Pentagon, secretly tape-recorded conversations with Lewinsky and turned them over to Starr's investigators.

Finnish police are sifting through Web sites for links between the teenager who plotted a Columbine-style assault in Montgomery County and the youth who murdered eight people at a school outside Helsinki last week. The teenagers had communicated by e-mail, apparently out of a common interest in the Columbine school shootings and violent video games. The disclosure underlines how the horrific violence in Colorado still resonates among disaffected youths around the world. Plymouth Meeting resident Dillon Cossey, 14, had been trading e-mails with the Finn and "recognized the screen name and recalled having contact," said J. David Farrell, who represents Cossey.

Court records unsealed in a federal case yesterday reveal that officials discussed race as an integral part of their work to create a 2009 redistricting plan for the Lower Merion School District. The papers, unsealed by U.S. District Judge Michael M. Baylson, show memos, e-mails, and expert opinions mentioning race. The documents went back and forth among district administrators and school board members as they wrestled with redistricting before the board vote in January 2009.

Camden County Sheriff Michael McLaughlin has ordered an investigation into reports that officers in his department have shared sexually explicit e-mails during work time. McLaughlin said yesterday that he had ordered the internal probe - along with random checks of employees' e-mails - after learning of the alleged Internet abuse from reports in the Courier-Post. The sheriff said 17 e-mails - most of them involving suggestive jokes - were allegedly exchanged last summer. The newspaper said some of the e-mails contained sexually explicit images.

Former State Sen. Vincent J. Fumo yesterday admitted that he stepped up his computer security after news broke that the FBI was investigating him - and that his staff continued to destroy e-mails even after prosecutors blanketed his allies and his network of nonprofits with subpoenas. Enduring a fifth day on the stand in his federal corruption trial, Fumo insisted that he believed that deleting documents was lawful because no subpoena had been served on him directly. Fumo leveled an accusation of his own yesterday, telling jurors that he had been targeted by the U.S. Justice Department under a Republican president because "I was the most prominent Democrat in Pennsylvania.

A Northampton County man on probation for stalking faces criminal charges in Chester County after he allegedly exchanged lewd e-mails with an undercover officer posing as a 15-year-old girl. Stuart W. Ackerman, 33, of Freemansburg, was taken into custody Monday at his workplace in Fogelsville, Pa., and arraigned by District Justice Stanley Scott, Chester County District Attorney Joseph W. Carroll announced yesterday. After failing to post the $25,000 cash bail set by Scott, Ackerman was sent to Chester County Prison to await a preliminary hearing in front of District Justice Mark Bruno, tentatively scheduled for Tuesday.

A transplanted Phillies fan now living in California has been charged with computer-hacking attacks on the Phillies, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and Philadelphia Daily News that flooded the team, and sports writers and editors with tens of thousands of e-mailed complaints and excoriations. Allan Eric Carlson, 39, who formerly lived in Vineland and Merchantville in South Jersey, was arrested yesterday by FBI agents at his Glendale, Calif., home, according to U.S. Attorney Patrick L. Meehan.

E-mails posted on a political blog have exposed tension between the Republican running mates for Montgomery County Board of Commissioners over the propriety of taking campaign money from a GOP leader who is a onetime felon. District Attorney Bruce Castor, running for a seat on the commission, jabbed his running mate, incumbent Commissioner Jim Matthews, for accepting the financial support of Bob Asher, a member of the Republican National Committee who was convicted in a 1986 bribery-related case and who served eight months in prison.