According to court documents, in about February 2021, BAILEY met Victim 1, a New Orleans resident born in about October 2009, in a social media service specializing in the presentation of short-form videos hosted by its users. BAILEY used username “dabratt88” and pretended to be a minor female. After communicating with Victim 1 about twerking videos, BAILEY sent Victim 1 a video of a juvenile female twerking and engaging in sexually explicit conduct. BAILEY then instructed Victim 1 to either send him a video of Victim 1 herself engaging in sexually explicit conduct or else BAILEY would post the video he sent Victim 1 on social media platforms, claiming the video was of Victim 1. Victim 1 complied. For the next three months, BAILEY directed Victim 1 to record and send him increasingly explicit content, while threatening to release the prior content if Victim 1 refused.
On or about May 27, 2021, law enforcement authorities executed a search warrant on BAILEY’s residence in Cleveland, Ohio, during which they seized BAILEY’s cellular telephone. A forensic review of the phone revealed that between about November 2019 and May 2021, BAILEY sought and obtained depictions of dozens of minors engaging in sexually explicit conduct using the same extortionate scheme he used to obtain sexually explicit material from Victim 1. Additionally, BAILEY sold these sexually explicit depictions of minors by charging approximately $30 in exchange for sharing a link to the content. BAILEY sold the link dozens of times.
This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice. Led by United States Attorneys= Offices and the Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS), Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state and local resources to better locate, apprehend and prosecute individuals who exploit children via the Internet, as well as to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.projectsafechildhood.gov.
U.S. Attorney Evans praised the work of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in investigating this matter. Assistant United States Attorney Jordan Ginsberg, Chief of the Public Integrity Unit, is in charge of the prosecution.