A dad decided to “catfish” his own daughter and took the entire ruse to the point that he convinced his child to send him nude pictures of herself — and it gets worse.

The man’s name has not been released in order to protect the identity of his daughter.

The case, which has been described as “deeply hideous,” takes place in upstate New York, and on Monday, a 41-year-old man and the father of the 14-year-old victim pleaded guilty to child pornography charges. The dad posed as a teenage boy in order to “coerce and bully” his own child into sending him nude images. He then faked the suicide of the boy he was posing as, and began sexually abusing his daughter.

Syracuse.com reports that the man, from Herkimer County, created a fake Instagram account, as well as a fake AOL texting account, in October of 2013. He then began messaging his own daughter, claiming to be a 16-year-old boy living near the border of Canada in an act known as “catfishing.” He flirted with her, asking her if she had a boyfriend and telling her she had a “hot body.” Soon, he began demanding that his own daughter send him nude photos of herself.

By November, the man’s teenage daughter had had enough, and repeatedly tried breaking up with what she thought was a teenage boy. In retaliation, her own dad threatened her. Still posing as a 16-year-old boy, he said that he would send her dad screenshots of their “explicit text conversations.” Blackmailed and feeling cornered, the young girl reluctantly complied, sending her own dad the nude photos he was demanding. As she did so, she repeatedly wrote to him, asking, “Can we please be done?”

Sometimes a computer can be a dangerous weapon. [Image credit: Bloomberg/Getty Images]

But her dad was, apparently, not ready to be done with his cruel, sick ploy against his own child.

“I tell u what u want to be gone then send me nudes and close ups and I will let u go,” the dad, still posing as the boy, said in a text.

“No,” his daughter responded. “I’m not going to do that. That’s another reason I’m leaving. All you talk about is sex sex and more sex. Honestly that is not what a relationship is about.”

“Then I will send these to your dad and then I won’t have to worry about anyone else having u,” the man wrote, referring to the nude photos she had sent.

After finally managing to break up with the boy she thought she was dealing with, her dad transmitted the sexually explicit photos he had managed to coerce from his daughter from his computer to his cellphone — which is a federal crime. The dad then used the nude photos that he himself had blackmailed his daughter for against her as “leverage” to begin to abuse her, saying that her boyfriend had sent them to him.

And then, just to add yet another layer of horror to his daughter’s life, the dad catfished his daughter yet again, in order to tell her that the boy had committed suicide



Shortly after the girl broke up with the boy, she received a text message from the account her dad had set up in order to catfish her. The text claimed to be from the boy’s mother, court documents claim, and stated that the boy had committed suicide.

It was soon after that occurred that the dad told his daughter that the “boyfriend” had sent him the nude photos of his daughter. According to court documents, her dad often referred to the photos, and would tell her how much he liked the photos while he was sexually abusing her.

A year after the catfishing incident took place and she believed that the boy had committed suicide, the girl bravely reported the sexual abuse to the school nurse and it was only then that the long period of abuse and torture finally ceased and the girl found out that the boy had never existed.

The man wept in court as he pleaded guilty. The tears were, however, almost certainly for himself rather than for his daughter and the trauma he has caused her. The man apparently told the judge, “I’m giving away many years of my life.”

He faces up to 250 years in prison on the federal charges alone. He is due to be sentenced in July.

[Image via Shutterstock]