A Canadian man was sentenced to 33 years in prison after pleading guilty to targeting more than 145 children across the United States, some as young as 6 years old, in an eight-year-long sextortion scheme.
40-year-old Ramanan Pathmanathan pleaded guilty on January 30, 2026, to one count of coercion and enticement of a minor and one count of child pornography production.
Besides his 33-year sentence, Pathmanathan also has to register as a sex offender and serve 10 years of supervised release. He is already serving a 12-year prison term in Canada following a 2022 guilty plea to similar offenses there.
Sextortion is a form of online blackmail in which cybercriminals threaten targets with publicly leaking explicit images and videos they acquired (through coercion) or stole (through hacking), while also (in some cases) demanding to be paid for not releasing the compromising content.
While in many cases of sextortion, the material used by the malicious actors for blackmail is not real, as they are only using it to pressure the victims into paying an extortion demand, according to court documents, Pathmanathan used multiple Instagram and Facebook Messenger accounts to record victims engaging in sexual acts.
