Canton Man Pleads Guilty in Teen 'Sextortion' Case

A Canton man pleaded guilty to threatening and extorting teenage girls with sexually explicit images of themselves in an attempt to get them to send him more graphic photos.

Destin Whitmore, 23, on Monday pleaded guilty to five counts of extortion, three counts of distribution of child pornography and two counts of possession of child pornography.

“Whitmore preyed on vulnerable girls who had the misfortune of crossing his path, both in person and online,” said United States Attorney Sally Quillian Yates. “We cannot emphasize enough the dangers to children of revealing personal information and sexually explicit images to others online. This case shows that those images could resurface in the most unexpected and unfortunate ways.”

According to U.S. Attorney Sally Quillian Yates, 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,” according to a press release from the U.S. Attorney Northern District of Georgia’s Office.

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 allegedly 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.

Yates 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.

Whitmore is set to be sentenced at 10:30 a.m. Dec. 9 before U.S. District Court Judge Charles A. Pannell, Jr. The case was investigated by the Cobb County Police Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

“In our continued partnership with the F.B.I., the Cobb County District Attorney’s Office, and the U.S. Attorney’s Office, and as a member of I.C.A.C. (Internet Crimes Against Children) Task Force, the Cobb County Police Department’s Crimes Against Children Unit will continue to aggressively pursue and prosecute those individuals who seek to exploit and harm our children,” said Sgt. Dana Pierce, public information officer with the Cobb County Police Department.

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