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Baltimore resident Matthew K. Walsh, 25, has been sentenced to 20 years in federal prison, followed by 30 years of supervised release for the sexual exploitation of a minor in order to produce child pornography.
Specifically, federal prosecutors say that Walsh created fictitious online profiles purporting to be a teenage girl to contact and induce underage boys between the ages of 12 and 17 to send sexually explicit images and videos to the individual they believed to be a young girl, but was, in fact, Walsh.
The scheme went on for several years.
According to his plea agreement, between at least 2016 through 2021, Walsh created profiles on several online platforms to make contact with underage boys to get them to send the illicit materials.
Once Walsh obtained the photos and videos, he extorted the boys into producing more sexually explicit images and videos at his instruction and threatened that if they failed to do so, he would send the previously provided images and videos to their friends, family, and classmates.
Walsh directed the boys to send him the images and videos he directed them to produce, and that the images and videos needed to include their faces.
“In some of the communications, by text, email, and video, the minor victims are crying and begging Walsh not to send the images and videos to their families and classmates, to leave them alone, and not to make them do more, but Walsh persisted with his threats and demands,” prosecutors said.
Walsh admitted that he harassed some of the victims for years and obtained hundreds of files depicting sexually explicit conduct from some of them.
In total, Walsh obtained approximately 2,000 images and videos depicting the sexually explicit conduct of various minor males.
Prosecutors said that once Walsh received the files from his victims, he saved them in folders under a variation of the boys’ real name in a cloud storage account. He also uploaded some of the files to various Twitter accounts, and sold the sexually explicit files for a total of approximately $8,000.
Officials said that specifically, Walsh communicated with at least 50 different Twitter users interested in purchasing either individual files of child sex abuse material (CSAM), or Walsh’s “collections” of CSAM.
The “collections” contained over 100 different victims’ files.
In several messages, the Twitter users were aware that some of the individuals in the sexually explicit files were as young as 14 years old, prosecutors said.
Several Twitter users also exchanged “tips” with Walsh on how to evade police investigators and discussed methods for enticing and extorting victims’ nude images and videos.
Walsh was also a member of online groups which included other offenders who would post, sell, and trade CSAM.
During the investigation, search warrants were executed on:
- 17 Google accounts;
- 22 Twitter accounts;
- Four Facebook accounts;
- Seven Instagram accounts;
- Six Snapchat accounts;
- Three Dropbox accounts;
- Three TextNow accounts;
- One Kik account;
- One Apple account;
- One Oath/Yahoo! account
Each account was created and utilized by Walsh.
To date over 40 minor males have been positively identified as victims of Walsh’s conduct, and at least 30 victims’ pictures and videos were sold and/or distributed to others by Walsh.
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