LOS ANGELES - A Ventura County man who extorted boys and girls online for naked photos was sentenced Friday to 15 years in federal prison for producing child pornography.
Jeremy Brendan Sears, 24, of Moorpark, set up fake profiles on Facebook and other social network sites and pretended to be a teenage boy or girl, prosecutors said. After romancing them online, often after meeting them through music fan sites, he persuaded his teenage victims to send him sexually explicit photos and videos, the U.S. Attorney's Office said in a statement.
He admitted in his plea agreement that he made "physical threats against his minor victims, threatening that the victims would be raped, tortured, or killed if they did not give defendant a thing of value - namely, nude and sexually explicit images of themselves," prosecutors said.
He pleaded guilty in January to producing child pornography. If he gets out of prison he will be on supervised release for the rest of his life.
Subscribe to Closing Arguments
Sign up for new weekly newsletter Closing Arguments to get the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and hot cases and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world.