A man in Northern Ireland has been sentenced to life for several crimes, including manslaughter, after using social media sites to blackmail and sexually abuse at least 70 minors in several countries. <\/p>\n
Alexander McCartney, 26, was sentenced by a judge at Belfast Crown Court on Friday for child sexual offenses, blackmail and the manslaughter of a 12-year-old girl who took her own life in the United States in 2018 after being \u201ccatfished,\u201d according to a statement from Northern Ireland\u2019s Public Prosecution Service (PPS). <\/p>\n
Catfishing \u2013 often used on social media – is when a person uses false information and images to create a fake identity online with the intention of tricking, harassing, or scamming another person. <\/p>\n
According to authorities, McCartney pretended to be a young girl, befriended victims on social media and manipulated them into sending him nude images of themselves. <\/p>\n
The victims were then threatened \u201cinto sending him indecent images and videos of themselves, forcing them to engage in depraved and sometimes dangerous sexual acts,\u201d the statement said. <\/p>\n
McCartney \u2013 who targeted around 3,500 girls from Northern Ireland, Ireland, Great Britain, the US and New Zealand \u2013 sought to \u201cexploit that vulnerability in the most shocking ways,\u201d acting head of the PPS Serious Crime Unit Catherine Kierans said. <\/p>\n
\u201cAll McCartney\u2019s victims were young, innocent children\u201d as young as 10 years old and \u201cstruggling with identity and body image issues and had reached out for help on social media,\u201d Kierans said. <\/p>\n
In total, McCartney pleaded guilty to 185 charges involving 70 victims. McCartney must serve a minimum of 20 years in prison before he can be considered for parole. <\/p>\n
\u201cTragically, one of his young victims, who was just 12, had taken her own life during an online chat in which he was threatening her and forcing her to engage in sexual activity,\u201d Kierans noted. She said that the girl, an American, and McCartney never met in person. <\/p>\n
\u201cIf we discover this activity, or it is reported to us, we remove it, lock the violating account and report it to the authorities,\u201d the social media site said. It added that the app has \u201cextra protections for teens to make it difficult for them to be contacted by strangers.\u201d <\/p>\n
The PPS is working to identify more of McCartney\u2019s victims, according to its statement. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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A man in Northern Ireland has been sentenced to life for several crimes, including manslaughter, after using social media sites to blackmail and sexually abuse at least 70 minors in several countries. Alexander McCartney, 26, was sentenced by a judge at Belfast Crown Court on Friday for child sexual offenses, blackmail and the manslaughter of a 12-year-old girl who <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9134,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-9133","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9133","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9133"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9133\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9134"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}