A Rhode Island man is accused of coercing a 10-year-old West Valley City girl to perform sex acts on camera by threatening her with a computer virus — and he may have tried the same thing with more than a dozen other girls.
The 18-year-old Providence man, using a female moniker, messaged the girl with a link to what he said was an online children’s gaming platform, federal prosecutors in Rhode Island wrote in a news statement.
After that link and another one opened to blank websites, the girl and the man launched a video call.
The man "told the young girl that the links she clicked transmitted a virus to her computer and that her personal information had been taken," prosecutors wrote. He told the 10-year-old to undress on camera, or he would post her personal information to the internet.
"When the 10-year-old undressed and stood in front of the camera, [the man] instructed the girl to perform sexually explicit acts," prosecutors wrote. "The girl pretended to comply, cut off the communications, and notified her mother."
The mother alerted West Valley City police, who investigated the exchange along with FBI agents in Salt Lake City and Providence.
After investigators identified the man’s IP address, federal agents and officers in Providence and Warwick, R.I., searched his computers and smartphones. They found images of at least two pre-pubescent girls, and investigators believe the man “communicated with more than a dozen pre-pubescent girls in much the same way it is alleged that he communicated with the 10-year-old Utah girl,” prosecutors wrote.
He has been charged in Rhode Island with sexual exploitation of a child, possession of visual depiction of a minor engaged in sexually explicit conduct, coercion and enticement of a minor, and possession of child pornography.