Fairfield County man sentenced for using fake online profiles to get child porn
A Millersport man will spend more than eight years in federal prison after admitting to using a fake persona online to trick a 12-year-old girl into sending him explicit videos and photos.
Devin Bailey, 27, had previously pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Columbus to distributing child pornography and interstate communications with the intent to extort.
U.S. District Judge Edmund Sargus ordered Bailey to serve 100 months in prison.
According to court records, Bailey pretended online to be a girl from Florida and, in using that persona, obtained more than 120 photos and 10 videos from the female victim.
Bailey also used multiple online personas to attempt to solicit sexually explicit photos from an adult victim, which he then used to attempt to threaten and extort the adult for more photographs, court records say.
In his communications with the adult victim, Bailey sent child sexual abuse material to the adult, who recognized one of the girls in the images as a 12-year-old that they knew.
Bailey had kept the images of the 12-year-old for more than five years before sending them to the adult victim, according to court records, and threatened to distribute the images to family members of the adult victim and across the Internet if the adult did not do as Bailey asked.
Between May and June 2022, court records say Bailey used numerous email addresses, phone numbers and Snapchat accounts to harass and threaten the adult victim in a manner that was consistent and aggressive.
The adult victim said they would contact law enforcement, at which point Bailey said that the numbers he was using were untraceable and he could get "hundreds more," court records say.
Police were able to identify Bailey, and a forensic review of his electronic devices found about 200 images and 20 videos of child pornography.
As part of his sentence, Bailey will be under lifetime supervision when he is released from prison.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Ohio man sentenced for using fake online profiles to get child porn