DAVENPORT, IOWA – A Fulton, Missouri man, Chad Alan Craghead, 45, was sentenced on July 7, 2022, to 360 months in prison for Production of Child Pornography and Interstate Communications with Intent to Extort. Following his prison term, Craghead was ordered to serve five years of supervised release. Craghead will also be required to register as a sex offender.
Craghead engaged in “sextortion” over a period of nearly two years. At the time he committed these offenses, he was an elementary and middle school teacher and high school track coach. Craghead posed as a teenage boy online and obtained nude images of Minor Victim 1, a sixteen-year-old. After obtaining those images, he created a second false identity and demanded additional nude images of Minor Victim 1, threatening to disseminate the nude images he already had to her friends and family if she did not comply. Craghead extorted Minor Victim 1 over the course of several months, including sending photos of her home, referencing her parents and sister by name, and sending a photo of her sister.
Craghead also extorted Minor Victim 2. Craghead threatened to disseminate Minor Victim 1’s nude images if Minor Victim 2 did not comply with his demands for nude images and videos. Minor Victim 2 complied, sending Craghead sexually explicit videos of herself. Even then, Craghead continued to extort Minor Victim 2 by threatening to disseminate her images and videos if she did not continue to send him sexually explicit material.
Through several Snapchat accounts associated with Craghead, the FBI located numerous other minor female victims across the country, some as young as 12 and 13 years old, who either sent Craghead nude images or from whom he extorted or attempted to extort nude images. In one instance, Craghead took on the minor females’ identity, created a social media account, and obtained child pornography material with the intent to blackmail the senders, all while acting as the minor victim. Craghead told the victim he did it because she refused his demands. The FBI observed the same “sextortion” pattern of conduct with all identified victims. The victims reported feeling fear, distrust, and distress due to Craghead’s conduct.
U.S. Attorney Richard D. Westphal of the Southern District of Iowa made the announcement.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Muscatine Police Department investigated the case. This case was prosecuted by the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Iowa as part of the U.S. Department of Justice’s “Project Safe Childhood” initiative, which was started in 2006 as a nationwide effort to combine law enforcement investigations and prosecutions, community action, and public awareness in order to reduce the incidence of sexual exploitation of children. Any persons having knowledge of a child being sexually abused are encouraged to call the Iowa Sexual Abuse Hotline at 1-800-284-7821.