British man who posed as a girl to solicit teenagers online jailed for 20 years

Alexander McCartney pleaded guilty to 185 counts of child sexual abuse and blackmail. In March, he pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter.

“This was one of the most depraved, disturbing and prolific cases of child sexual abuse we have ever seen in the prosecution service,” said Catherine Kierans, Acting Head of Serious Crime at the Northern Ireland Public Prosecution Service. press conference Friday.

By pretending to be a teenage girl, McCartney gave his victims a false sense of security. According to police in Northern Ireland, he encouraged them to send explicit photos or engage in sexual activity via webcam or mobile phone and then blackmailed them. McCartney then shared those images and videos online, police said.

McCartney groomed, manipulated and sexually abused the young victims, Detective Chief Superintendent Eamonn Corrigan said in a statement. McCartney started cheating on girls online from his childhood bedroom in Newry, a town in Northern Ireland, when he was a teenager.

Police in Northern Ireland estimated that McCartney had 3,500 victims in several countries.

He created “what can only be described as a pedophile company. He had multiple devices and was operating in multiple time zones,” Corrigan said.

In 2018, McCartney’s operation resulted in the death of 12-year-old Cimarron Thomas of West Virginia. Kimarron shot herself during an online contact with McCartney, “catalyzed by him trying to get her to involve her younger brother,” according to police in Northern Ireland.

On October 25, McCartney became the first person in the United Kingdom to be convicted of the manslaughter of a victim who lived abroad.

In New Zealand, the father of two young girls who were victims of McCartney told the PA news agency in Britain that McCartney befriended his older daughter on the social media platform Snapchat in 2017. After gaining her trust by pretending to be a girl, McCartney posed naked.

“When he got it, he had the power and it was a case of playing by his rules,” the father, who gave only his first name, Bob, told the news agency. Later, McCartney also asked for photos of the girl’s younger sister, he added.

Police in Northern Ireland first became aware of McCartney when they received a report from police in Scotland in 2019 about a 13-year-old girl being groomed by an online predator.

When detectives raided McCartney’s home that year, they arrested him and seized 64 devices that stored tens of thousands of photos and videos of underage girls being blackmailed through his numerous fake online accounts, including Snapchat.

Online solicitation of minors is also a serious problem in the United States. According to data on the FBI’s website, online solicitation of children and teenagers who are coerced into sending sexual images has “increased significantly”. The same is true of what the FBI calls “financial sex extortion,” which involves predators threatening to release sexually explicit images unless they get paid.

Between October 2021 and March 2023, more than 13,000 cases of financial sexual exploitation of minors were reported to the FBI and Homeland Security, including at least 12,600 victims, most of whom were boys.

Officials have stepped up their efforts to crack down on sex extortion schemes, which mostly target minors. According to the FBI, between January 2021 and July 2023, at least 20 teenagers took their own lives after being caught in such a scam.

The devastating consequences have prompted officials and victim advocates to launch awareness campaigns to teach teenagers how to protect themselves and to emphasize that help is available if they are victims.