Overview
- A U.S. federal judge on Wednesday sentenced 40‑year‑old Ramanan Pathmanathan to 33 years in prison, to be served after a separate 12‑year Canadian term, plus 10 years of supervised release and mandatory sex‑offender registration.
- Prosecutors say Pathmanathan posed as a New Jersey teenage boy on Instagram and Facebook Messenger over about seven years to coerce at least 145 minors into sexually explicit video chats, recording the abuse to threaten victims into compliance.
- Court filings detail extreme commands given to victims, some as young as six, including directions to expose genitals and perform sexual acts with relatives and animals, and repeated use of adult images as examples.
- The case began with an arrest in Toronto on March 10, 2021, and reached U.S. courts after investigators from the FBI Houston Child Exploitation and Human Trafficking Task Force, the Texas Department of Public Safety, Toronto police, and the DOJ’s Office of International Affairs shared evidence and secured temporary surrender.
- Law enforcement officials say the sentence underlines how digital forensics and international cooperation can prosecute sextortion, but survivors will face long recoveries and the case highlights a broader rise in online exploitation complaints.