Cleveland Man Sentenced to 204 Months in Prison for Engaging in "Sextortion" of Children

NEW ORLEANS –  JAVAN BAILEY, age 22, a resident of Cleveland, Ohio, was sentenced by United States District Judge Carl J. Barbier to 204 months in prison, followed by 15 years of supervised release, after previously pleading guilty to  a two-count indictment charging him with producing images and videos depicting the sexual exploitation of an eleven-year-old female, Victim 1, in violation of 18 U.S.C. ' 2251(a), and transmitting interstate threats for the purpose of extorting a thing of value, in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 875(d), announced U.S. Attorney Duane A. Evans.  BAILEY will also be required to register as a sex offender and pay a $200 mandatory special assessment fee.  Additionally, Judge Barbier scheduled a restitution hearing for January 4, 2024.

According to court documents, in about February 2021, BAILEY met Victim 1, a New Orleans resident born in about October 2009, in a social media service specializing in the presentation of short-form videos hosted by its users.  BAILEY used username “dabratt88” and pretended to be a minor female.  After communicating with Victim 1 about twerking videos, BAILEY sent Victim 1 a video of a juvenile female twerking and engaging in sexually explicit conduct.  BAILEY then instructed Victim 1 to either send him a video of Victim 1 herself engaging in sexually explicit conduct or else BAILEY would post the video he sent Victim 1 on social media platforms, claiming the video was of Victim 1.  Victim 1 complied.  For the next three months, BAILEY  directed Victim 1 to record and send him increasingly explicit content, while threatening to release the prior content if Victim 1 refused. 

On or about May 27, 2021, law enforcement authorities executed a search warrant on BAILEY’s residence in Cleveland, Ohio, during which they seized BAILEY’s cellular telephone.  A forensic review of the phone revealed that between about November 2019 and May 2021, BAILEY sought and obtained depictions of dozens of minors engaging in sexually explicit conduct using the same extortionate scheme he used to obtain sexually explicit material from Victim 1.  Additionally, BAILEY sold these sexually explicit depictions of minors by charging approximately $30 in exchange for sharing a link to the content.  BAILEY sold the link dozens of times.

U.S. Attorney Evans praised the work of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in investigating this matter.  Assistant United States Attorney Jordan Ginsberg, Chief of the Public Integrity Unit, is in charge of the prosecution.