A U.S. airman has been charged with coercing a 9-year-old woman to share sexually specific pictures of herself, after he posed as a 13-year-old on the gaming website Roblox.
David Ibarra, 31, was arraigned Wednesday in a New York federal court docket after being arrested in February in Anchorage, Alaska, the place he was serving on energetic obligation within the Air Power, prosecutors mentioned in an announcement.
A decide ordered him to be held pending trial on fees together with sexual exploitation of a kid. Ibarra’s lawyer didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
Ibarra was serving as an air transportation specialist Senior Airmen, which primarily handle cargo, in response to an Air Power spokesperson.
Prosecutors say the woman, who lives on Lengthy Island, met the person on TikTok in August and he requested her to speak with him on Roblox, telling her he was a 13-year-old boy dwelling in Texas.
He allegedly acquired the woman to textual content him from her cellphone and finally directed her to create specific movies and pictures, whereas sending her cash through Apple Pay.
Ibarra paid her $191 in a sequence of 17 transactions, prosecutors allege.
The woman’s mom finally grew to become conscious of the messages. Posing as an older sister, she garnered extra details about the sender by texting him from her personal cellphone, and he in the end despatched her a selfie revealing a part of his face, in response to the indictment.
Investigators used Ibarra’s El Paso, Texas-based cellphone quantity and searched his iCloud account to verify his identification, in response to prosecutors.
Underneath interrogation the 31-year-old allegedly admitted to paying the woman for the pictures, saying he thought the sufferer was 12. Prosecutors say he acknowledged coercing different women into sending specific pictures as nicely, together with one in New Jersey.
