A Georgia man has agreed to plead guilty to charges of extortion and cyberstalking after targeting a Boston-area woman on Instagram.
Gary E. Leach, 24, of Athens, Ga., has agreed to plead guilty to two counts of cyberstalking and one count of extortion through interstate threats.
According to court documents, from October 2019 until his arrest in April 2021, Leach, then a graduate student at the University of Georgia, targeted a Boston-area woman in an online cyberstalking and extortion campaign.
Leach used anonymous Instagram accounts to obtain private video calls and photographs of a sexual nature from the victim through false promises of payment and surreptitiously recorded the victim during these calls.
Leach threatened to share the recordings with the victim’s family if she did not continue to send him content of a sexual nature over Instagram and repeatedly harassed and extorted the victim for additional interactions of a sexually explicit and degrading nature.
Leach also allegedly cyberstalked other women on social media, including a woman residing in Canada.
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Key Facts
- State: Massachusetts
- Category: Sex Crimes|Cybercrime
- Source: DOJ Press Release â†â€â€
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