Ohio man gets 15 years for AI-generated sextortion campaign against women and girls

Key points

• A federal court sentenced 37-year-old James Strahler II of Ohio to 15 years in prison for cyberstalking, sextortion, and producing child sexual abuse material.
• Strahler used more than 100 AI models across 24 platforms to fabricate sexual images of at least six adult women between December 2024 and June 2025.
• Investigators found over 700 AI-generated images posted to a child abuse site, plus 2,400 more flagged files on his phone.
• He is the first defendant convicted under the Take It Down Act, a 2025 US law banning non-consensual intimate images and AI forgeries.
• Victims can request removal of intimate images through the FTC-backed Take It Down platform.

A federal judge has sentenced an Ohio man to 15 years in prison for running a months-long harassment campaign built almost entirely on artificial intelligence.

James Strahler II, 37, pleaded guilty in April to cyberstalking, producing obscene visual depictions of child sexual abuse, and publishing digital forgeries. According to the US Department of Justice, he's the first person convicted of violating the Take It Down Act, the 2025 federal law that criminalises sharing non-consensual intimate images, including AI-generated ones.

What did he actually do?

Between December 2024 and June 2025, Strahler sent harassing messages to at least six adult women: phone calls, voicemails, online posts, and a mix of real and fabricated nude images. Court filings show he used more than 100 AI models across 24 platforms to generate the explicit material, then shared the fabricated videos with victims' co-workers.

His tactics escalated into blackmail. He demanded nude photos from the mothers of women he was targeting, threatening to release forged pornography of their daughters if they refused. Voicemails included rape threats that recited victims' home addresses.

Investigators found more than 700 images he'd posted to a site dedicated to child sexual abuse material, mixing real victims with animated figures. A further 2,400 files on his phone were flagged as nudity, morphed child sexual abuse material, or violence.

What is the Take It Down Act?

The Take It Down Act is a US federal law passed in 2025 that makes it a crime to publish sexually explicit images of a real person online without consent, including AI-generated forgeries. It also requires platforms to remove flagged content quickly once a victim reports it.

We covered the statute's first enforcement action on 15 June 2026, when the DOJ seized two deepfake nude sites that drew tens of millions of visits a month. Strahler's case, first reported by BleepingComputer, is now the first criminal conviction under the law. Prosecutors will likely treat it as a template.

Case at a glance

Should you worry if this happens to you?

Report threats to the FBI at ic3.gov and to local police. Save messages and any URLs before blocking the sender: that record is what prosecutors need. For image removal, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children runs Take It Down, a free service covering intimate images on participating platforms. Adults can also use StopNCII.org, which works by generating a digital fingerprint of an image so platforms can block it without ever storing the original.

Strahler's case isn't isolated. In March, 22-year-old Jamarcus Mosley pleaded guilty to cyberstalking and extortion after breaking into hundreds of young women's social media accounts. Kyle Svara, 26, was sentenced in July to 76 months for hacking nearly 600 Snapchat accounts to steal private photos. The sentence here is the steepest of the three, and the AI-fabrication element is what makes it a marker case rather than a routine stalking prosecution.