A man from Northern Ireland has been sentenced to a minimum of 20 years in prison by a U.K. court in what is considered the country’s largest criminal “catfishing” case.
Alex McCartney, 26, pleaded guilty earlier this year to a manslaughter charge in Northern Ireland after a young American girl, one of thousands he allegedly blackmailed online, died by suicide.
In total, McCartney admitted to 185 charges in court involving 70 child victims, including blackmail, inciting minors to engage in sexual acts, and producing and distributing indecent images.
He was also held responsible for the death of 12-year-old Cimarron Thomas from West Virginia, according to the U.K.’s Press Association.
Authorities report that McCartney attempted to coerce Thomas into sending explicit images involving a younger sibling during their online interactions. She tragically took her own life in May 2018. Her father, a U.S. Army veteran, died by suicide 18 months later, unaware of the circumstances behind her death.
Jim Gamble, a former senior British police officer specializing in child protection, called it a “shocking case” due to the scale and harm inflicted on young victims. “The sheer scale of it and the horrific nature of the harm inflicted on these young girls makes it one of the worst I’ve ever seen,” Gamble said. “Don’t think this happens very rarely.”
Detective Chief Superintendent Eamonn Corrigan of Northern Ireland’s Crime Operations Department condemned McCartney as a “disgusting child predator” who posed as young girls online to groom, manipulate, and sexually abuse victims, some as young as four, to satisfy his own and others’ perverse interests.
McCartney’s offenses spanned from 2014 to 2019, during which he is believed to have targeted around 3,500 victims globally, primarily through Snapchat, including individuals in Australia, New Zealand, and the U.S. The Belfast Crown Court case focused on 70 of those victims, including Thomas.
In a statement responding to the New Mexico case, Snapchat said the app was designed “as a place to communicate with a close circle of friends, with built-in safety guardrails,” and it said there were “deliberate design choices to make it difficult for strangers to discover minors on our service.”
“We continue to evolve our safety mechanisms and policies, from leveraging advanced technology to detect and block certain activity, to prohibiting friending from suspicious accounts, to working alongside law enforcement and government agencies, among so much more,” the company said, adding that it continued to work with “industry, government, and law enforcement to exchange information and concept stronger defenses.”
