An Ohio man was sentenced to 15 years in prison for multiple cybercrimes, including sextortion and cyberstalking of numerous victims via phone calls, voicemails, text messages, and online posts.
When he was arrested on federal charges on June 23, 2025, 37-year-old James Strahler II was also charged with anonymous telecommunications harassment and child pornography production and distribution.
According to court documents, Strahler used more than 100 AI web-based models and more than 24 AI platforms to generate sexually explicit videos and images of his victims.
"From December 2024 until June 2025, Strahler sent harassing messages to at least six adult female victims. These messages included nude images of the victims, both real and AI-generated," the Justice Department said on Tuesday.
"Strahler created more than 700 images of both real victims and animated persons and posted them to a website dedicated to child sexual abuse. An additional 2,400 images and videos on his phone were flagged as depicting nudity, morphed child sexual abuse material or violence."
He shared AI-generated pornographic videos with his victims' co-workers and demanded nude photos from the mothers of multiple women he was harassing, threatening to leak the forged obscene content of their daughters if they didn't comply.
Strahler also left his victims voicemails with rape threats that mentioned their home addresses and posted online child sexual abuse material he had generated using AI.
Strahler pleaded guilty in April to cyberstalking, producing obscene visual representations of child sexual abuse, and publication of digital forgeries charges, and was the first defendant to be convicted of violating the new Take It Down Act.
The Take It Down Act was enacted in 2025 to prohibit online publication of explicit content and AI forgeries without consent (also known as "revenge porn").
More details on how to protect yourself from cyberstalking attempts and take down images and videos shared online without consent are available on the FTC's Take It Down platform.
In March, 22-year-old Jamarcus Mosley also pleaded guilty to cyberstalking, extortion, and computer fraud charges after hacking into the social media accounts of hundreds of young women.
More recently, in July, 26-year-old Kyle Svara was sentenced to 76 months in prison after pleading guilty to hacking nearly 600 women's Snapchat accounts to steal private nude photos.
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