Niles Man Accused Of 3-Year Child Porn Blackmail Scheme

CHICAGO — A Niles man is accused of forcing a teenage girl to create child pornography of herself over several years under threat of releasing the images. According to federal prosecutors, the blackmail began in 2014 when the girl was 13 years old and continued until her parents discovered the messages in 2017.

David Cottrell, 28, of the 8300 block of Western Avenue in Niles, was ordered held without bond Tuesday in federal court in Chicago. A judge agreed with prosecutors that his release ahead of trial was certain to harm the girl.

In a memorandum requesting pretrial detention, Assistant U.S. Attorney Charles Mulaney said Cottrell met the victim of the blackmail scheme when she was in seventh grade through a chat site where he was "soliciting females to talk about sex." They started communicating using the anonymous messaging application Kik and later switched to Snapchat.

At the time, Cottrell was a student at law school in New York City, and the 13-year-old girl told him she was 18, according to prosecutors. He asked her to send him pictures in her underwear, and later topless. The girl sent the photos thinking that she was anonymous and continued communicating with him.

Prosecutors said Cottrell informed the girl he knew she was much younger than 18 in the fall of 2014. He told her he knew her name, address, middle school, names of family members and her parent's jobs, threatening to post the child pornography she had created and sent him to her family if she did not comply with his demands for "specific sexual photos and videos."

The terrified girl complied with his demands, according to prosecutors. Cottrell told her had had accumulated the child pornography on a cloud storage account and a physical hard drive. He told the girl "no one would ever catch him because he had encrypted all his files," according to Mulaney's memo.

"Through the cell phone applications Kik and Snapchat, [Cottrell] terrorized [the girl] on a near-daily basis," until her parents discovered evidence of the extortion in July 2017, when she was 16, according to the prosecution. Investigators discovered one nearly five-minute pornographic video Cottrell made the girl produce where the girl "starts crying as she is forced to perform," Mulaney wrote.

In messages prosecutors said Cottrell sent to the girl, he made her enter into contracts he had drafted requiring the girl to "service" him or face "punishments" including more humiliating and graphic videos. He made her stay up late at night making videos for him, sending her "scripts" and demanding she perform to his satisfaction, according to Mulaney.

"One bad move and ur parents get a letter from concerned parents about their daughter distributing porn to other children," Cottrell wrote in one message, according to Mulaney. In another message he allegedly sent while she was in math class, he told the girl "I ... own you and don't tolerate disobedience." And a few times, according to prosecutors, he made the girl leave class during school to take a picture of herself in the bathroom.

Cottrell is an only child who lives with his mother and works for his father's accounting firm doing clerical and bookkeeping work, according to his defense attorney Kenneth Yeadon. Cottrell graduated from University of Wisconsin and had been attending New York University School of Law until July 2017 – shortly after the girl's parents discovered the correspondence.

Prosecutors said the government began intercepting his internet traffic starting in March 2018, after the girl told Cottrell the police were looking for him. Investigators did not find any evidence of wrongdoing. Federal agents searched his home in June 2018. Investigators found a laptop, hard drive and thumb drive that were all encrypted, as well as two password-protected iPhones and an iPad, according to Mulaney. Through an attorney, Cottrell declined to provide the passwords, which is his Fifth Amendment right, both the defense and prosecution agreed.

Agents also found an unencrypted hard drive that contained child pornography of another girl, as well as three documents from September 2008 indicating he had collected personal information about the second girl and offered to "help" her remove her child pornography from the internet, according to Mulaney's memo.

Defense attorney Yeadon argued it was clear from the government's evidence that the girl had not identified David Cottrell as the person she had communicated. In his response to the government's memo, he said it was clear there has been no contact between the girl and Cottrell since September 2017. He said the case against his client was a "historical case" and the indictments involve events that occurred more than 18 months ago and the prosecution evidence identifying Cottrell was weak.

In addition to internet addresses corresponding with Cottrell's location, the prosecution pointed to various pieces of circumstantial evidence indicating that Cottrell had been the person communicating with the girl. The include details about a short story Cottrell wrote for a college class, an actress who he was a fan of, a mention of a specific art gallery in New York, and "additional information that corroborates his identity as the perpetrator, such as music and film interests that correspond to books, posters and music" at Cottrell's home in Niles.

"Despite the overwhelming stress of a criminal investigation hanging over his head, David went to his job every day, worked to complete his law school course work, and went about his business at home in Niles," Yeadon wrote. "He did not threaten anyone or put anyone in danger." He said Cottrell, who has pleaded not guilty, has known he was under investigation for crimes carrying with lengthy prison sentences and intends to stay in town and face the charges.

Cottrell faces one count of extortion, one count of inducement of a minor to engage in illegal sexual activity, one count of attempting to produce child pornography, one count of production of child pornography, and one count of possession of child pornography and two counts of transportation of child pornography. If convicted, he faces a mandatory minimum sentence of 15 years in prison and a maximum of life in prison.