Candy Malone AKA Candy Viola, Lisa Glover, Luke Green, Kitty Schmidt-Jones at a People’s Playground Project planning session at Greenhouse Coffee on Main Street, Honesdale.
Honesdale, PA — For weeks, a woman named Candy Viola attacked Pocono Review on every investigative article this outlet published about the People’s Playground Project, Lisa Glover, Mayor Derek Williams, and the Wayne County Community Foundation. She called our journalists stalkers, losers, failures, and psychos. She told us “we know who you are.” She never disputed a single fact.
Candy Maylone AKA Candy Viola sent us a C&D shortly after this article was published. You can read that here: People’s Playground Project Affiliate Sends Cease And Desist
When asked directly — yes or no — whether she was affiliated with PPP, Lisa Glover, or Derek Williams, she refused to answer. Three times. She responded with insults, deflection, and — when pressed a third time — by telling us she was “affiliated with your parents” and that “they say you’ve always been a disappointment and a psycho stalker.”
She never answered. We have the photo.
On April 17, 2026, the People’s Playground Project posted a photograph to its official Facebook page advertising a drafting meeting at Greenhouse Coffee on Main Street. A review of PPP’s Facebook page shows that its other photos consistently crop or obscure participants’ faces. This image is the exception — posted from an overhead angle, sideways, with Maylone’s face clearly visible. It appears to have been an accident. Candy Viola — whose legal name is Candy Maylone — is in that photograph, seated at the table reviewing site plans alongside PPP co-founder Lisa Glover, the domestic partner of Honesdale Mayor Derek Williams. Same room, same table, same project she refused to acknowledge any connection to when asked directly.
That is a deliberate refusal to disclose a material affiliation with the subjects of active investigative reporting, maintained across multiple direct questions, while running a sustained campaign to discredit the outlet conducting that reporting.
The question is whether Candy Maylone was acting on her own — and whether what she did, and what the people around her have done, constitutes a federal crime. Under 18 U.S.C. § 241, it is a federal felony — punishable by up to ten years in prison — for two or more persons to conspire to intimidate any citizen in the free exercise of a right secured by the Constitution. The right to publish reporting on public officials without retaliation is among the most protected rights in American law. Whether the coordinated harassment campaign documented in this article meets that threshold is not a rhetorical question. It is the question § 241 exists to answer.
What Started It
Pocono Review first covered the People’s Playground Project in December 2025 — a straightforward news article about the community redesign effort, based on what was publicly available at the time. Nobody called it fake. Nobody called it AI. Nobody sent angry messages. The article ran, and the response was silence. PPP and its affiliates had no problem with Pocono Review when the coverage was favorable.
That changed when Pocono Review began pulling records — 990 filings, donor lists, board rosters, corporate registrations, borough meeting minutes — and connecting the names, the money, and the relationships no one had disclosed. In late April, the outlet published two articles on PPP and the people behind it.
In mid-May 2026, Pocono Review posted a series of public questions directly on PPP’s own Facebook page — under a fundraising video tagged with NEPA Gives and the Wayne County Community Foundation. The questions were specific: Did Glover disclose her Known Grove board connection before launching the campaign? Is PPP using the same raise-to-match model as the WCAA building fund? Does WCCF know its employee is romantically involved with PPP’s co-founder?
Honesdale residents responded. They asked where the removed equipment went, where the money from a previous playground fundraising campaign had gone, and why the borough stonewalled a Right-to-Know request about it. The comment section on PPP’s own page was turning into a public accountability forum. Residents were tagging neighbors. The conversation PPP’s structure was designed to prevent was happening in PPP’s living room.
Then Candy Maylone showed up.
On the same thread, replying to a now-deleted comment, Maylone wrote: “Oh I know exactly who is behind that page. They do this often. Very odd behavior.” She was claiming insider knowledge of the outlet’s identity — while sitting at PPP’s planning table. In another reply on the same thread, she told Pocono Review: “you want a conspiracy so bad.”
The comment Pocono Review had posted wasn’t about conspiracy. It was about disclosure — whether Glover’s board seat, Williams’s salary, and WCCF’s role had been made transparent to donors. Maylone’s response was to attack the outlet asking the questions, claim she knew who was behind it, and dismiss the entire inquiry. The harassment campaign on Pocono Review’s own page began immediately after.
What Candy Maylone Did
Between approximately May 1 and May 28, 2026, Maylone — posting as Candy Viola on Facebook — appeared on nearly every Pocono Review post covering PPP, Williams, WCCF, and Glover. Across nine investigative stories generating more than ten thousand views, she produced zero factual rebuttals. Not one sourced claim contested, not one financial figure challenged. What she produced was a sustained campaign of personal attacks, false identification, and intimidation directed at journalists and at a sitting elected official she believed was behind the reporting.
Against Pocono Review journalists, her comments included: “you’re a failure,” “dangerous stalker,” “complete nut case,” “obsessed loser,” “little cry baby,” “scumbag,” “gross unloved little troll,” “psycho stalker,” “you’re literally insane,” and “you’re a disappointment to your family.” She posted mocking GIFs and told a third party the outlet was run by “a dangerous stalker” and “a complete nut case.”
In one comment, she formatted her attack as a counterfeit “EDITOR’S NOTE”:
Maylone frequently deleted some of her comments shortly after posting them — a pattern that suggests awareness the comments are indefensible. Someone expressing a legitimate opinion doesn’t scrub the record. Someone who knows her conduct could create consequences for the people she’s affiliated with does.
Against a sitting politician, Maylone repeatedly falsely claimed Pocono Review is being operated by “Jim” and “James”. She wrote “Written by Jim Hamill” on one post, asked “are you referring to Jim and James?” and when the outlet denied any connection, she said to “get a life Jim.” James Hamill is a sitting Honesdale Borough Councilmember and the only candidate who challenged Derek Williams in the 2025 mayoral election. Hamill also has oversight authority over Central Park, borough assets, and voted against PPP.
She was trying to make James Hamill afraid to ask questions about the project she is personally involved in.
The threat. On the article documenting PPP’s apparent violation of Pennsylvania’s charitable solicitation law, Maylone’s first comment was: “Everyone is concerned about you. We know who you are. Think hard what your end goal is here. Maybe find a more meaningful hobby because you’ve gone down a sad rabbit hole.”
That comment got seven reactions — the most of any in the Honesdale threads. Directed at journalists investigating PPP’s fundraising compliance, from a person secretly participating in PPP’s planning sessions, on the specific article questioning whether the project was breaking the law — that is not social media banter. When Pocono Review asked “Who is ‘we’? Are you speaking on behalf of Borough Hall, the People’s Playground Project, or yourself?”, she didn’t answer.
The coordinated pattern. Candy Maylone AKA Viola didn’t operate alone. On May 19, 2026, Pocono Review published “The Silence of Honesdale,” an analysis showing that 10,000 views across nine Honesdale investigations produced almost no public engagement — while a single Pocono Township story with half the views generated 82 comments and 20 shares. The article documented how Maylone and Julie Rose Romano created a hostile enough environment in the comment sections that residents stopped participating. Romano has openly admitted she is personally friends with Lisa Glover, Derek Williams, Keenan Gruver, and Gruver’s partner Heather. Candy Maylone AKA Candy Viola’s response to an article about her silencing the public conversation was to post a meme reading “Are you gonna cry?” and write “Little cry baby is back again with another post for his 66 followers.” Her cease and desist calls this “ordinary online disagreements.” Her response to being documented doing it was to do it again, and again, and again.
Romano’s own comments follow the same pattern. She researched the names on our bylines, announcing publicly that “Nicole Hallman” appears to be two journalists in California and Louisiana and that “Vinnie Vetaducci” has “no record in all of the US” — her own attempt to unmask and delegitimize this outlet’s journalists. She called the journalist “James,” the same name Maylone used, the same identification of Hamill. She told us our reporting “is entirely in bad faith under poorly disguised pseudonyms.” She said our work was “unhealthy,” that it had “clearly taken over your life,” that it was damaging our “physical and mental health and your family,” and that “the only life you’re going to ruin is your own.” Then she told us to get some help. That’s not a concerned citizen offering advice. That’s someone weaponizing the language of mental health to frame accountability journalism as a psychiatric symptom — while defending the project, the people, and the fundraising our reporting questioned. Honesdale Council President Tiffany Rogers LOVED that comment. She led the censure against the council member Candy Maylone AKA Candy Viola and Julie Rose Romano are targeting.
Candy responded to Romano stating “It’s definitely him”.
Two of Maylone’s posts warrant separate attention. In one, she wrote: “Meanwhile instead of being an active participant in the community and your family you sit at the bar on your phone creating multiple ‘news’ accounts trashing the people you lost to.”
The phrase “the people you lost to” is a direct reference to the 2025 mayoral race — confirming Maylone believes she’s addressing the politician who ran against Derek Williams, her affiliate’s domestic partner. She is taunting a political opponent of the man whose girlfriend she’s planning a playground with — a playground funded through the foundation that pays that man’s salary. In the same thread, she posted a Scooby-Doo meme of Fred saying “Let’s Split Up Gang!” — directed at the outlet investigating the interconnected network of people behind PPP.
Read in context, a person inside the group being investigated posted an image of a cartoon gang leader telling his crew to scatter. Whether that was conscious signaling to the other individuals showing up on the same threads or an unwitting tell, the optics speak for themselves.
The affiliation she hid. On the article about PPP’s unregistered fundraising — the same post where she warned “we know who you are” — Pocono Review asked Maylone directly: “Simple Yes or No: Are you affiliated with People’s Playground Project, Lisa Glover or Derek Williams?”
Her response: “Are you affiliated with a psychiatrist?”
Asked again: “Are you affiliated with a psychiatric facility?”
Then: “I’m affiliated with your parents. They sent me to troll you. They say you’ve always been a disappointment and a psycho stalker.”
She was photographed at a PPP planning meeting weeks before she evaded that question. PPP posted the photograph themselves.
Why This May Be a Federal Matter
Strip the scenery. Forget the coffee shop and the playground. Look at what this person did.
A woman secretly affiliated with a publicly funded project ran a weeks-long campaign to discredit the journalists investigating it and to publicly identify and intimidate the politician she believed was behind the reporting. She concealed her affiliation when asked directly. She scrubbed her posts. She always said “we.”
That conduct doesn’t just offend decency. It potentially implicates three federal statutes.
Conspiracy against rights. 18 U.S.C. § 241 makes it a federal felony — up to ten years — for two or more persons to conspire to intimidate any citizen in the free exercise of a constitutional right. The right to publish critical reporting about public officials and the right to petition government as an elected representative are both squarely protected. Maylone’s campaign targeted both. She used “we” — not “I” — consistently. She appeared alongside other commenters using the same vocabulary, on the same posts, with zero factual rebuttals among them. The statute doesn’t require a written agreement. It requires coordinated conduct.
Interstate threats. “We know who you are” — directed at journalists investigating an organization the speaker is secretly affiliated with, on an article documenting potential legal violations — raises the question under 18 U.S.C. § 875 of whether the communication was designed to coerce silence. Courts set a high bar for “true threats,” but context matters: concealed affiliation, press coverage of potential crimes, communication specifically designed to discourage reporting. That distinguishes this from ordinary online hostility.
Obstruction. If any federal investigation, audit, or proceeding is opened into PPP’s fundraising compliance, WCCF’s 990 filings, or the grant pipeline documented in this reporting, Maylone’s campaign to intimidate the journalists and the politician she believed was behind the reporting becomes potentially relevant evidence of obstruction under 18 U.S.C. § 1512.
The Jim Hamill problem. Maylone didn’t just harass anonymous journalists. She repeatedly and publicly falsely identified a sitting councilmember — Jim Hamill — as the person behind Pocono Review, on posts visible to the community he serves.
For the record: neither Jim Hamill nor any other elected official operates, contributes to, or controls this outlet. Maylone’s identification is wrong. Her intent was not.
She intended to publicly name and intimidate a sitting elected official she believed was scrutinizing an organization she was secretly affiliated with — to silence criticism of PPP, Williams, and Glover by threatening the person she believed was producing it. Hamill is one of two councilmembers who voted against committing $400,000 to PPP. He sits on the borough council that governs Central Park. He is the only person on that council who asked any questions, and one of two who voted against PPP. Maylone was telling him to shut up — while secretly participating in Williams’s domestic partner’s project, the same project that opponent had questioned.
An attempted bank robber who walks into the wrong building is still charged with attempted robbery. The wrong target doesn’t erase the intent. Under federal law, intent is the operative element.
If that’s not intimidation of a public official in service of a political and financial enterprise, the word has no meaning.
Part 2 of this investigation documents the enterprise Candy Maylone was protecting — the financial structure, the manufactured crisis, the captured institutions, and the question federal prosecutors should be asking about all of it.
Pocono Review has posed detailed questions to Mayor Derek Williams, Lisa Glover, the People’s Playground Project, and the Wayne County Community Foundation across multiple prior articles. None have responded. Those questions — and the silence that followed — are part of the public record at poconoreview.com.
We are no longer asking.
Pocono Review covers Wayne, Monroe, Pike, Carbon, Lackawanna, and Luzerne counties. Tips, documents, and on-the-record accounts: tips@poconoreview.com. We never name our sources.
The Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Bureau of Charitable Organizations accepts complaints about unregistered charitable solicitation at attorneygeneral.gov. The FBI accepts tips at tips.fbi.gov. The IRS Criminal Investigation Division accepts referrals at irs.gov/compliance/criminal-investigation.
Pocono Review is committed to accuracy. If you believe any fact in this report is incorrect, email corrections@poconoreview.com with the specific claim and your supporting documentation. Verified corrections will be published promptly.