Online impersonation case dropped

COEUR d'ALENE - Coeur d'Alene Police detectives dropped false personation charges against Zac Eifler, who confessed to impersonating a Kootenai County Commissioner last week.

County Commissioner Todd Tondee said last week that he had talked with detectives and gotten the impression that the charges would probably be dropped.

Coeur d'Alene Police Sgt. Christie Wood confirmed that after talking with the commissioner, detectives decided to drop the case.

"Detectives talked with Commissioner Tondee and asked if he wanted to pursue the case," Wood said. "He indicated that he did not, so they dropped it."

Eifler had yet to be contacted about the case on Tuesday, but was relieved to hear the case had been dropped.

"I didn't know anything until now," he said. "I've been completely in the dark."

Eifler said he did talk with the commissioner last week to apologize for his behavior, and felt the discussion went well.

Tondee filed a false personation report with the police department on June 22 to try to prove that someone else used his name in an online comment section under a story on cdapress.com.

The story was about the County Planning Commission holding hearings on its controversial Unified Land Use Code proposal. The hearings were shut down when a crowd packed the courthouse meeting room over fire capacity.

Eifler admitted last week to using the screen name Todd_Tondee to berate commenters in the comment section under the story.

He called all of the meeting attendees a bunch of "thugs" among other things, which he said later was meant to be a joke. He didn't realize the gravity of the stunt until he read that Tondee actually filed a police report.

The following Monday, Eifler called The Press, Commissioner Tondee and the Coeur d'Alene Police to confess.