Mark P. Barnwell, Sextorting Minors, Texas 2016

PEORIA, Ill. – A Texas man, Mark P. Barnwell, has been ordered to serve 35 years in prison for producing child pornography in 2016 and threatening minor victims in Illinois and seven other states while he was required to register as a sex offender.

U.S. District Judge Joe Billy McDade sentenced Barnwell on Jan. 9, 2019, to 25 years for production of child pornography to be followed by 10 years for having committed the crimes while he was required to register as a sex offender. Barnwell was ordered to remain on supervised release for the remainder of his life after he completes the 35-year prison term.

According to court documents and admissions made in court, Barnwell, 36, lived in a shed behind a relative’s house in Whitehouse, Texas. Barnwell’s victims included minor-aged girls, including 28 from Central Illinois communities, and victims from California, Iowa, Mississippi, Nevada, Texas, Washington, and West Virginia.

Barnwell entered his pleas of guilty on Aug. 29, 2018. Barnwell admitted that while he was a registered sex offender, he exploited minors online by using false personas on Facebook. Barnwell controlled multiple female-presenting profiles which he used to contact female Facebook users, including minors, and advertised a modeling opportunity he claimed would pay up to thousands of dollars per photo shoot.

At Barnwell’s urging, the minors who accepted the offer then took, and sent to him, photographs which they believed were being produced for the purposes of a modeling portfolio. The minor victims believed they would be paid by cash, check, or direct deposit once they completed the modeling portfolio process. At Barnwell’s explicit direction, the photographs taken by the minors progressed from various stages of undress to sexually suggestive and/or sexually explicit photographs of themselves.

Once he obtained compromising images, Barnwell threatened to injure the minor victims’ reputations and embarrass them by posting their nude pictures online if they failed to comply with his demands for additional images. In total, Barnwell used this scheme to obtain nude photographs from 43 minor victims located in nine judicial districts across eight states.

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