NEW YORK (1010 WINS) -- A Long Island man used Snapchat to solicit photos of young girls' feet — and began soliciting and paying for "increasingly explicit photos and videos" after establishing contact with them, prosecutors say.
Bradley Garyn, 27, was charged with soliciting child pornography on social media and coercing a young girl via "sextortion" on Wednesday, the Suffolk County District Attorney's office said in a release on Thursday.
Garyn "used social media as a hunting ground and lured these young girls into his scheme, using cash payments in exchange for his twisted, ever-increasing demands," District Attorney Timothy Sini said in a statement.
Prosecutors say Garyn started contacting young girls on Snapchat under "multiple usernames, including 'ipay4feetpics,' 'paying4feetpics' and 'PayU4Selfies.'"
After he made contact, Garyn would offer the girls $10 in exchange for photos of their feet, then pay them via apps including Cash App or in Amazon gift certificates, the DA's office said.
Garyn would then "solicit increasingly explicit photographs and videos in exchange for higher amounts of money, up to $500," prosecutors said.
On one occasion, he "coerced" a girl to into sending him sexually explicit photos and videos of herself by threatening to make other images she'd sent him public, according to prosecutors.
Law enforcement officials who arrested Garyn on Dec. 3 discovered his Amazon account history "included the purchase of approximately 900 Amazon gift codes sent to more than 200 different recipients," the DA's office said.
Garyn could face between 10 and 20 years in prison if he is convicted of the top counts of use of a child in a sexual performance, prosecutors said.
His attorney didn't immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday.
