Man convicted for ‘sextortion’ of more than 100 children on Omegle, Snapchat, and TikTok
Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photos from Getty Images
A Nevada man was sentenced to 65 years in prison, followed by lifetime supervised release, for sextorting more than 100 children on Omegle, Snapchat, TikTok, and Mega and distributing child sexual abuse material on dark web forums.
From 2018 to 2021, James Patrick Burns used several platforms to contact minors and coerce or threaten them into producing sexually explicit content, according to court documents presented at trial. Prosecutors called Burns the “most prolific creator” of illegal content on these forums in the years he was active.
Snap released new features last month intended to protect teen users from sextortion scams. The features include in-app warning messages when teenagers get messages from users other people have…