Lucas Chansler, 32, of St. Johns, Florida, was convicted of masquerading online as a 15-year-old and coercing more than 350 teenage girls to send him naked pictures. The FBI was only able to identify about 100 of those victims across 26 states, CBS 13 investigative reporter Jon Chrisos reported Monday, and the agency is involved in an ongoing search for the rest, including in Maine.
“We are very concerned about it,” Special Agent Aaron Steps, who oversees the three FBI offices in Maine, told Chrisos. “The nature of this crime is such that the impact on the victim is often as bad or severe as a hands-on offense.”
Arizona woman Ashley Reynolds, 20, was one of Chansler’s victims. She was 14 when he started contacting her, seemingly out of the blue. He told her he had nude pictures of her and threatened to distribute them publicly unless she sent him more. Over the past year, Reynolds has been telling her story publicly in hopes of spreading awareness about so-called “sextortion” plots and helping the FBI find more of Chansler’s victims around the country.
“He was almost manipulating my mind to believe that he did have some pictures of me,” she later told CNN. “So I didn’t know, maybe I had my laptop up, and maybe [he was able to hack into my computer camera while] I was changing or something like that.”
An impressionable teen, Reynolds said she sent Chansler a few photographs in hopes that he’d be satisfied and leave her alone, but then she was hooked — at that point, he really did have pictures and leverage to blackmail her. He demanded as many as 60 pictures a night.
Chrisos reported that, during sentencing, a judge called Chansler “cruel, cold and unapologetic — teenage girls begging, literally begging him not to make them do more photos.” He was sentenced to 105 years in prison, but federal agents still have work to do finding victims and trying to bring the wide-ranging case to a conclusion.
“We are continually looking for additional victims in order to provide services and track down material that’s out there,” Steps told CBS 13.
The bureau is also using the high-profile case as a way to remind parents and teenagers to be careful with the Internet and technology.
In most cases, the FBI says a predator claiming to have photos actually does not, but acknowledges some are able to hack into phones and webcams, Chrisos reported. Law enforcement officials recommend people not keep phones and computers in bedrooms, and if they do, cover the camera.
Cases of sextortion are not new to Maine. In 2014, John Villegas, then 23, of Kittery was sentenced to 33 months in prison for one count of cyber stalking after stealing a female acquaintance’s laptop, then threatened to send explicit photos he found of her on the device to friends and colleagues.
Justice Department prosecutor Mona Sedky said at the time that for Villegas’ victim, “it was really no different than someone being present with a weapon and trying to make her take her clothes off.”
