NEW YORK (1010 WINS) — A Queens sex offender released on parole was busted a second time for convincing an underage girl to send him explicit content, federal prosecutors said.
Jorel Fowler, 32, was arraigned after his arrest on Wednesday in Brooklyn Federal Court for posing as a 15-year-old boy named "Lev" in order to talk up a girl he met on the online video game Roblox in January, the Daily News reported.
Federal prosecutors said the victim, who lives in Virginia, said she was 13 when they started messaging on Snapchat, where he allegedly coaxed her into giving him sexual images and video of herself.
According to court documents, Fowler asked for specific photos of her and told her, "Ima teach you how to do a better pic" of her genitalia. He sent her a photo of his face during the exchange, prosecutors said.
On Feb. 18, the girl's mother noticed her sending pictures of herself on an iPad and notified the Fairfax County Police Department, who contacted the FBI.
When law enforcement raided his Far Rockaway home, he allegedly attempted to delete data from one of his devices before answering the door.
Federal agents seized several devices, at least one of which had "large amounts of child pornography," according to a filing by Assistant U.S. Attorney Gilbert Rein.
The allegations against Fowler bear a striking resemblance to what landed Fowler in state prison, according to the report.
Fowler was arrested in 2014 after he met young girls on the web site Omegle and engaged them in a "game" in which they scored "points" by smiling and exposing themselves.
Prosecutors in Queens said at the time that he was caught only days before a planned trip to meet a 13-year-old girl in Oklahoma.
He was sentenced to a 5-to-15-year prison term in 2015 and was released on parole in March 2021.
In a Wednesday letter to Magistrate Judge Peggy Kuo, Rein called Fowler a flight risk and a danger to the community.
"He is either incapable or unwilling to avoid this behavior," he wrote. "The defendant is a serial predator who preys upon young children by soliciting sexually explicit images and videos of their bodies. The safety of the community and the defendant's substantial risk of flight require that he be detained pending trial."
At an appearance in Brooklyn Federal Court, Kuo ordered him held until a bail hearing on Friday.
His lawyer, Nora Hirozawa of the Federal Defenders, requested that he not be placed in general population at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn.
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