Canadian man gets 33 years for using social media to coerce US children into sending sexual content
Prosecutors said the man spent years using fake online identities to contact children and manipulate them into sending sexually explicit images and videos.
A Canadian man was sentenced to 33 years in U.S. federal prison for using social media to coerce more than 145 children across the United States into sending sexually explicit content, the Justice Department said on Wednesday.
Ramanan Pathmanathan, 40, of Toronto, pleaded guilty in January to producing child sexual abuse material and coercing and enticing a minor. Prosecutors said he spent years using fake online identities to contact children and manipulate them into sending sexually explicit images and videos.
According to court documents, Pathmanathan operated multiple accounts on Instagram and Facebook Messenger, where he posed as a teenage boy from New Jersey to gain the trust of young victims. Between at least 2014 and his arrest in 2021, he targeted children across the United States, recording the material they sent and storing it on his computer.
Source: https://therecord.media/canadian-man-gets-33-years-social-media-luring-kids
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