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Convicted Child Pornographer Held Victims' Email, Facebook Accounts for Ransom

Child abusers don't just use technology to hide their tracks, but to attack as well.

Pedophiles don't just use the internet to hide their tracks. Yesterday, a Michigan man was sentenced for the production of child pornography and cyberstalking, a part of which involved hacking into his victims' email and social media accounts.

James S. Allen, 38, from New Baltimore, MI, was sentenced to 262 months in prison and 10 years of supervised release, according to a press release from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). In all, Allen stalked and threatened 18 female victims, "many" of whom were minors.

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Back in 2012, Allen setup an elaborate process for targeting his victims. First, he contacted them over the internet or text message, saying he had found naked photos of them online. He then directed them to a site which purportedly contained the images.

Naturally, anyone approached with this information would likely check. But the page was instead a phishing site, designed to record the victim's email address and password once they were entered, and send the credentials off to another email address controlled by Allen. According to the complaint, the website purported to be the photo sharing site Flickr.

Allen then broke into these accounts, sometimes took full control of them by changing the password, and instructed the victims to take part in a video Skype call with him, where he told them to remove their clothing.

One of the victims of harassment, labeled as Victim 1 in the complaint, received text messages from an unknown individual, threatening to send pictures to her mother and grandmother. The stalker even included the phone number and email of the victim's relatives in the message.

The messages also indicated the individual knew who the victim was talking to on Facebook at a certain time, the complaint continues.

The stalker even included the phone number and email of the victim's relatives in the message.

It turned out Allen had hacked into both the victim's Facebook and Yahoo email accounts, giving him access to a wealth of information to intimidate Victim 1 with. On top of this, the victim's account was then being used to send messages to more girls on Facebook, to target them too.

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"Victim 1 indicated that she was upset about losing access to her accounts and having someone pretending to be her to trick other girls," the complaint reads.

From here, many other girls were enticed to click on a link and enter their details, and he sometimes posed as a Facebook "admin," and asked teenage girls to contact him via webcam to regain access to their accounts.

Once these second girls' Facebook accounts were hacked, the process started again, with Allen going after more victims. Eventually, Allen also broke into another girl's AOL and Twitter accounts.

Subpoenas issued to the various hacked profiles returned IP addresses associated with Allen.

It is already well known that child abusers make use of the dark web. Through the protection of hidden sites, as well as encryption, technologically-capable pedophiles can securely trade illicit images of children, all the while covering up their footprints. Although Allen seemingly didn't take any steps to protect his identity, such as the use of web proxies or Tor, he did do go that extra step to intimidate his victims by hacking their accounts.

As international law enforcement forces continue to crack down on dark web pedophiles, perhaps it's worth remembering that child abuse can happen in other technological spaces too.