Man busted for bigamy after Facebook suggested his wives be friends

TACOMA, Wash. (WBTV/AP) — A Washington state corrections officer has been charged with bigamy after Facebook discovered two women were connected to him and suggested they might want to "friend."

Prosecutors in Pierce County say Alan L. O'Neill married a woman in 2001, moved out in 2009, changed his name and remarried without divorcing his first wife.

That's when things got really screwy for the guy.

Facebook suggested that his first wife and his new wife should be friends on Facebook. When the first wife clicked the link to the suggested profile, she reportedly saw a profile photo of her husband and his new wife standing next to a wedding cake.

That is what allegedly happened to a corrections officer in Washington state, who now is on unpaid administrative leave after prosecutors charged him with bigamy Thursday.

Alan L. O'Neill, 41, has been summoned to court March 22 to answer the felony charge, the News Tribune is reporting.

O'Neill, previously know as Alan Fulk, has worked as a Pierce County corrections officer for five years, sheriff's spokesman Ed Troyer said. Efforts by the News Tribune to reach him for comment were unsuccessful.

According to charging documents, Fulk married his first wife in 2001. He reportedly moved out eight years later, but neither he nor she filed for divorce, the records show.

In December he petitioned to change his last name to O'Neill, the charging documents state. Later that month, he married his second wife.

After seeing the new wife's profile, O'Neill's first wife called his mom.

O'Neill then allegedly told his first wife not to tell anybody about his dual marriages, saying that he would fix it, the documents state.

She apparently alerted authorities, who used records from the Auditor's Office and District Court to suss out O'Neill's alleged duplicity, court records show.