FBI accuses Penn Hills man of preying on teens in Snapchat 'sextortion' scheme

A Penn Hills man is accused of co-running a child sex abuse scheme that involved using Snapchat to threaten teenage girls into sending him sexually explicit photos and videos of themselves, court records show.

The far-reaching federal “sextortion” investigation targeted Kaung Myat Kyaw and a yet-to-be named co-conspirator for attempting to sexually exploit and extort dozens of girls under 18 in Pennsylvania, across the country and overseas, investigators wrote in a criminal complaint.

Kyaw, whose age was not listed in court records, was arrested by FBI agents and booked into Allegheny County Jail after a court-issued warrant was served at his home Thursday.

On Monday, a magistrate judge ordered Kyaw to remain in custody until a Dec. 10 detention hearing by video conference. Assistant U.S. Attorney Carolyn Bloch told the judge that prosecutors are concerned Kyaw, who appeared in court briefly by video with help from a Burmese interpreter, is a flight risk.

Investigators traced social media accounts and phishing scripts used in the alleged scheme to an IP address based at Kyaw’s Penn Hills residence on Jefferson Road — a short walk from the Penn Hills Dog Park and about a mile from Penn Hills High School.

According to a criminal complaint, the victims included young girls from across the country — including 16-year-old girls from suburban Pittsburgh and Fairfax County, Va., and a 15-year-old girl near Rochester, N.Y.

The alleged scheme involved targeting a new juvenile each week for at least the past year, and sometimes more than 10 victims within a week, according to investigators and their initial interview with Kyaw.

Kyaw told investigators that he learned how to hack Snapchat accounts from “an unknown co-conspirator on an unknown forum,” the complaint said.

“Kyaw then agreed to provide to the unknown co-conspirator pictures and videos of nude females under the age of 18 after Kyaw successfully accessed the minor females’ Snapchat accounts,” investigators said in the complaint.

Using accounts such as “savnxh” and “jokerxkris,” Kyaw sent social media messages trying to coerce young girls to send him nude and sexually explicit images and videos, including by hacking into their accounts and threatening to post explicit material online or share with their contacts, according to the complaint.

“I hacked your nudes,” one of his messages to a teen girl in the region stated, according to the complaint. “If you block me I will send to everyone even your friends from school. I will post them on the internet along with your social infos. If you do not want that to happen, you have to make a deal with me!”

One of the victim’s moms learned of what was happening to her daughter earlier this year and alerted the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office, the complaint said.

As recently as last week, days before his arrest, Kyaw’s account was interacting with a 16-year-old girl who lives near Collier, according to the complaint.

Kyaw is charged with using cellphones, the internet and other forms of “interstate commerce to knowingly pursue, induce, entice and coerce” victims who are under 18 years old “to engage in unlawful sexual activity.”

If convicted, Kyaw could face a minimum sentence of 10 years in prison.

The U.S. Department of Justice has warned that the “sextortion” of minors — hacking, coercing or otherwise obtaining incriminating photos or information and then threatening to expose them if the minors don’t perform sex acts captured on a web camera — has become “a major threat in recent years.”

RELATED: Pennsylvania creates criminal offense of sexual extortion

In Pennsylvania, a new law enacted made sexual extortion a third-degree felony, punishable by up to seven years in prison if the victim is under 18 or the perpetrator has shown a sexual extortion pattern.