GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — A man from Maitland, Florida has been sentenced to 70 months in prison for receipt of child pornography in connection with a sextortion scheme. He is 22-year-old Brandon Huu Le.
According to the Department of Justice, Le used social media accounts on Snapchat to contact at least 270 girls from August 2019-December 2019. If a girl responded, Le turned the conversation to sexual topics.
Le then began to escalate a series of threats, which targeted his adolescent victims’ fear and insecurities about their futures, relationships, reputations, bodies and bodily autonomy, and their safety. He also used publicly available information about the girls to bolster his threats. In some cases, he threatened his victims into turning on their Snapchat location sharing to identify where they lived.
Typically, Lee threatened to publicly disclose the sexually charged conversation, unless they sent him an explicit picture. He also threatened to release the picture unless the girl sent him an explicit video, and threatened to release the video unless the girl engaged in a live video call, where she followed sexual commands that were directed by Le.
Some victims begged Le to stop. At some times, parents intervened and told Le to stop. However, he persisted. If victims blocked him, he contacted them on other platforms, messaged their friends and family, or followed through on his threats. In one case, he sent explicit pictures of a victim to her college’s admissions department.
Many of Le’s victims were minors, which they told him, making the images and videos he solicited child pornography. One of his victims was a 13-year-old girl living in the Western District of Michigan.
“Mr. Le’s actions were nothing short of vile,” said U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Michigan Mark Totten. “They had a devastating impact upon his victims. Sextortion is a growing threat in Michigan and across the nation, and my office will continue to hold these perpetrators accountable. With our law enforcement partners, we stand ready to protect anyone who finds themselves a victim of this crime.”
“Protecting our young people from predators like Brandon Le is a top priority for the FBI and law enforcement agencies across Michigan,” said Devin J. Kowalski, acting special agent in charge of the FBI in Michigan. “Today’s sentence should bring some measure of peace to Le’s survivors who very courageously reported his behavior to law enforcement. The community is considerably safer with Le behind bars.”
