Man Charged with Making Harassing Phone Calls to Victims in Eagan, Rosemount, Lakeville

An Apple Valley man is facing multiple charges of harassment, stalking and disorderly conduct after police say he made more than 6,500 phone calls within six weeks, many of them calls to women to whom he made lewd remarks and suggestions.

Michael John Hansen, 33, is charged with five gross misdemeanor counts of harassment/stalking, each of which carries a maximum penalty of a year in jail and a $3,000 fine; five counts of harassing communications and six counts of disorderly conduct, each a misdemeanor with a maximum penalty of 90 days in jail and a $1,000 fine.

According to the criminal complaint, an Eagan woman contacted police last Dec. 9 and reported that she had received a phone call that morning from a man who asked for her husband. When the woman told the caller that her husband wasn’t home, the man said he was a neighbor, that he had seen her in the neighborhood, thought she was gorgeous and wanted to meet her for coffee.

The woman told the caller that she wouldn’t meet him for coffee unless her husband came along, and the caller said, “Oh, I see. So you are going to play that game?,” then hung up, according to the complaint.

Another Eagan woman reported to police that she had been awakened by a phone call early on the morning of Dec. 16 from a man who identified himself as “Jim.” The man called her by name and told the woman that he was coming to her house to “give her a massage and lick her all over,” according to the complaint.

The same man called back five more times within the next half-hour, the woman told police. When he called at 7 a.m., he told her he would be at her house in five minutes. Shortly afterward, she heard a knock at her door and answered it; she said she spoke to the man through the screen door but wouldn’t let him in the house.

In January, Eagan police learned from Scott County authorities that similar harassing phone calls had been made by the same phone number, and the county had three cases pending that were similar to the Eagan case.

The number was traced to Hansen, and police went to his Apple Valley home on Jan. 18. Hansen was “uncooperative and not accountable for his behavior,” the complaint says, though authorities did confirm that the suspect phone calls came from Hansen’s phone number.

On Feb. 14, a Lakeville police officer told Eagan officers that a similar case was pending there, with calls traced to the same phone number. The victim in that case said a man who identified himself as a neighbor had called five times in December and January, asking when her husband would be gone and making sexual remarks.

A Rosemount woman reported to police that a man whom she knew as “Mike” from Apple Valley had made repeated phone calls to her after she met him at a Rosemount restaurant. Call logs showed that the suspect made 69 calls to the Rosemount woman, who said many of the calls were sexual in nature and that the man had asked her to come over and “have sex in his truck,” according to the complaint.

A second Rosemount woman told police that she had met a man she knew as “Mike” at the Apple Valley pharmacy where she works. He asked for her phone number, and police found that he called her 31 times. The woman told police that she eventually asked the man to stop calling her because she thought his behavior was “creepy” after he asked her to send him nude photos of herself.

Police sought an administrative subpoena for Hansen’s TracFone number. In mid-March, TracFone provided information confirming that Hansen was the subscriber connected to the suspect number, and also turned over about 500 pages of call logs documenting 6,561 calls from Hansen’s number between Dec. 1, 2011, and Jan. 13, 2012. The call logs showed several numbers belonging to victims of the harassing phone calls.

Police spoke again to Hansen, who admitted making numerous phone calls to women he didn’t know. He told police that he didn’t intend to scare the women, and that he made the calls because he was “bored and being silly,” according to the complaint. He said he chose the numbers randomly out of phone books.

Hansen is scheduled to make a first appearance on the charges July 23 in Dakota County District Court in Hastings.