Sextortionist sentenced to 33 years in prison for targeting 145 children

A Canadian man has been sentenced to 33 years in jail after pleading responsible to focusing on greater than 145 kids throughout the USA, some as younger as six years previous, in an eight-year sextortion scheme.

Ramanan Pathmanathan, 40, pleaded responsible on January 30, 2026, to at least one rely of coercion and enticement of a minor and one rely of producing little one pornography.

Along with his 33-year sentence, Pathmanathan should register as a intercourse offender and be on supervised launch for 10 years. He pleaded responsible to related costs in Canada in 2022 and is already serving a 12-year jail sentence in Canada.

Sextortion is a type of on-line extortion during which cybercriminals publicly leak specific pictures or movies obtained (by way of pressure) or stolen (by way of hacking) to blackmail the goal and (in some circumstances) demand a reward for not publishing the infringing content material.

Though in lots of circumstances of sextortion, the fabric utilized by malicious actors to blackmail just isn’t actual and is simply used to coerce victims into paying extortion calls for, courtroom paperwork say Pathmanathan used a number of Instagram and Fb Messenger accounts to file victims participating in sexual acts.

Posing as a teenage boy from New Jersey, Pathmanathan contacted at the least 145 younger victims between March 2014 and his arrest on March 10, 2021.

Via this sextortion scheme, he would request his victims to interact in sexually specific acts by way of video chat, threatening to ship the recordings to their family and friends in the event that they refused or blocked their accounts.

“Whereas the underage victims participated in video chats with him, Pathmanathan requested that they have interaction in sexually specific acts. He directed them to reveal their genitals and have intercourse with their canine, siblings, and different family members. Throughout almost all of his video chats with the underage victims, Pathmanathan despatched the kids pictures of adults participating in intercourse acts and taught them how one can carry out his requests,” the Justice Division mentioned in a press release Wednesday.

“Pathmanathan recorded sexually specific acts on his victims and saved the recordsdata on his desktop pc. Among the victims have been as younger as six years previous. When the underage victims refused to proceed the sexually specific acts or blocked Pathmanathan’s social media accounts, he threatened to ship the photographs to the kids’s family and friends.”

In September 2021, the FBI additionally warned of a major improve in sextortion complaints and suggested those that have acquired sextortion threats to instantly stop all interactions with offenders, contact regulation enforcement, and file costs as quickly as attainable.