Canton Man Gets 17 Years in Teen 'Sextortion' Case

A Canton resident has received a “lengthy” prison sentence for threatening and extorting teenage girls with sexually explicit images of themselves in an attempt to get them to send him more graphic photos, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Georgia said on Wednesday.

Destin Whitmore, 23, has been sentenced to 17 years and six months in prison, followed by supervised release for the rest of his life.

Whitmore used a social media site, where he maintained two fake aliases as well as a personal account, to “entice and then force nine minors to provide him pornographic images of them,” according to acting U.S. Attorney John Horn.

“This case is a sad example of the dangers of the Internet for teens that aren’t careful,” Horn added. “This defendant victimized at least nine teenage girls by using their images to extort pornographic images, creating a vicious cycle of exploiting vulnerable victims.”

Whitmore in September 2014 pleaded guilty to five counts of extortion, three counts of distribution of child pornography and two counts of possession of child pornography.

According to the case outlined by the U.S. Attorney’s Office, a teenage girl from Arizona said she was contacted in April 2012 through a social networking site by a man who used the name “Ralph Jenkins.”

The person using the profile, later determined to be Whitmore, sent the teen “compromising images of herself and threatened to send those images to others, including her family members, if she did not immediately create additional images for him,” the prosecution argued.

A follow-up investigation of the profile found another profile under the name of “Lenny Carlington” was also used by Whitmore, along with his own social media account, to send sexually graphic images of numerous girls to these children in an effort to extort them for more images.

If the teens did not comply, Whitmore threatened to send the images to other people and post them onto websites for the public to see. Horn said many of the victims had known Whitmore through personal relationships or communicated with him over a long period of time through the use of web cameras.

Some of the girls had previously sent sexually explicit images to Whitmore or had provided such images to others, which Whitmore subsequently obtained. The investigation revealed that Whitmore contacted and extorted at least nine minors over a period of six months, the Office said.

The case was investigated by the Cobb County Police Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

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