BOSTON (WHDH) - A graduate student at the University of Georgia was arrested Friday on charges that he extorted a Massachusetts woman for videos, photographs, and communications of a sexual nature, and cyberstalked her for more than a year-and-a-half, federal prosecutors said.
Gary E. Leach, 23, of Athens, is slated to be arraigned in Middle District of Georgia on charges including one count of cyberstalking and one count of extortion through interstate threats, according to Nathaniel R. Mendell, U.S. Attorney for the District of Massachusetts.
Since October 2019, Leach had been obtaining private video calls and photographs of a sexual nature from the victim through false promises of payment, surreptitiously recorded the victim during the calls, and threatened to share the recordings with the victim’s family if she did not continue to send him content of a sexual nature over Instagram, charging documents indicate.
Leach is alleged to have used anonymous Instagram accounts to contact and repeatedly harass the victim, including accounts featuring nicknames for the victim and several variations of the username “u.kno_who,” prosecutors said.
While communicating with the victim, Leach allegedly indicated to her that he engaged in similar conduct with other Instagram users, telling her in one message, “Sweetheart I have hundreds of vids and thousands of pictures meticulously categorized by name.”
Leach also allegedly told the victim that some of these women also did not know that they had been recorded.
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