Canadian man sentenced to 33 years in federal prison for sextortion scheme targeting 145 American children

A 40-year-old Canadian national who spent nearly eight years preying on American children through Instagram and Facebook Messenger will serve 33 years in federal prison after pleading guilty to coercion and enticement of a minor and child pornography production.

Ramanan Pathmanathan contacted at least 145 young victims across the United States between March 2014 and his arrest on March 10, 2021, according to a Justice Department statement released Wednesday. Some of those victims were as young as six years old.

The sentence caps a case that lays bare how easily a foreign predator exploited major social media platforms to reach children in their own homes, and how little stood between him and his victims for nearly a decade.

How Pathmanathan operated

Pathmanathan posed as a teenage boy from New Jersey. He ran multiple accounts on Instagram and Facebook Messenger to find and contact minors. Once he made contact, the scheme followed a grim pattern.

The Justice Department stated that Pathmanathan demanded minor victims engage in sexually explicit conduct during video chat sessions. He directed children to expose their genitals and coerced them into performing sexual acts with animals, siblings, and other relatives. In almost every video session, he sent children images of adults engaged in sexual acts to show them what he wanted them to do.

He recorded it all. The Justice Department said Pathmanathan systematically saved the files on his desktop computer.

Then came the threats. When victims tried to cut off contact or block his accounts, Pathmanathan warned he would send the recorded images to their friends and family members. That leverage kept children trapped, compliant out of shame and fear.

The case is a stark reminder that online predators do not need physical proximity to inflict lasting harm. Pathmanathan never had to set foot in a school or a park. He reached children through devices their parents likely handed them. The pattern mirrors other recent cases of adults exploiting positions of access to prey on minors, though Pathmanathan needed nothing more than a screen name and a social media account.

A prior conviction in Canada, and a second reckoning in the U.S.

This was not Pathmanathan’s first conviction. In 2022, he pleaded guilty to similar offenses in Canada and received a 12-year prison sentence there. The federal charges in the United States addressed his crimes against American children specifically.

Pathmanathan entered his guilty plea on January 30, 2026, to one count of coercion and enticement of a minor and one count of child pornography production. The federal court imposed the 33-year sentence, ordered him to register as a sex offender, and added 10 years of supervised release following incarceration.

Whether the Canadian and American sentences run concurrently or consecutively remains unclear from available court records. So does the question of whether the 145 American victims overlap at all with the victims in his Canadian case.

What is clear: for at least seven years, from 2014 until his arrest in 2021, Pathmanathan operated freely across borders, using platforms that billions of people trust with their children’s attention every day.

The human cost: a father’s grief

The Pathmanathan case sits inside a much larger epidemic. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children reported more than 33,000 sextortion cases in 2024 alone and nearly the same number in just the first six months of this year.

Behind those numbers are families destroyed. Breitbart News previously reported on the case of a teen named Bryce, a student and basketball player at Nitro High School, who was targeted by a scammer posing as a 17-year-old girl. The predator gained Bryce’s trust, convinced him to send intimate photos, then demanded $500, threatening to share the images if he didn’t pay.

Three hours later, Bryce was found dead in his home from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

His father, Adam Tate, did not mince words:

“They say it’s suicide, but in my book, it is 100% murder.”

Tate also described the perpetrators in blunt terms: “They’re godless demons, in my opinion. Just cowards, awful individuals, worse than criminals.”

Bryce’s case, while separate from Pathmanathan’s prosecution, illustrates the lethal stakes of sextortion. These are not abstract cybercrimes. They produce real victims, children who see no way out of a trap set by adults hiding behind fake profiles. Federal law enforcement has responded with increased urgency, including sweeping nationwide operations targeting child sex abuse offenders.

Platform accountability and parental vigilance

Pathmanathan’s eight-year run raises uncomfortable questions about Instagram and Facebook Messenger. He maintained multiple accounts on both platforms. He used them to identify minors, initiate contact, conduct video chats, and record children. For years, nothing stopped him.

The platforms’ role in enabling predators is not a new concern. But cases like this one, where a single offender victimized at least 145 children through mainstream apps, test the credibility of any claim that current safeguards are adequate.

Law enforcement officials have urged parents and guardians to maintain open communication with children about online safety and to monitor their internet activities. Experts emphasized that victims of sextortion should understand they are not at fault and that reporting these crimes is essential for protecting themselves and preventing additional victims.

That advice is sound. But it places the burden almost entirely on families. The question of what responsibility the platforms themselves bear, for hosting fake accounts, for enabling video sessions between adults and children, for failing to detect patterns of predatory behavior over years, remains largely unanswered by the companies that profit from those interactions.

The broader pattern of adults exploiting access to children extends well beyond social media. Courts have dealt with cases ranging from daycare workers abusing toddlers in their care to high-profile professionals caught with child exploitation material, including a former Washington Post video director who pleaded guilty to child pornography possession. The common thread is predators finding pathways to children, and institutions too slow or too indifferent to close them.

33 years, and the question of enough

Pathmanathan’s 33-year federal sentence is substantial. Combined with his 12-year Canadian term, it signals that courts on both sides of the border treated his crimes with appropriate gravity.

But the sheer scale of the sextortion epidemic, tens of thousands of cases per year, and climbing, suggests that even aggressive prosecution is not keeping pace. Pathmanathan operated for seven years before anyone stopped him. He victimized children as young as six. He used the most popular social media platforms on earth to do it.

The Justice Department’s case file does not specify how Pathmanathan was ultimately identified and arrested. It does not explain why it took from his March 2021 arrest until January 2026 for a guilty plea. Those gaps matter. Every month a case like this drags through the system is another month predators elsewhere operate with impunity.

The 33,000-plus sextortion cases reported in 2024 represent only the ones that were reported. The actual number is almost certainly higher. Children caught in these traps often stay silent, exactly as their abusers intend.

Thirty-three years behind bars is a just outcome for Ramanan Pathmanathan. But justice for 145 children already harmed is not the same as protection for the next 145. Until the platforms that host these predators and the systems meant to catch them move faster than the criminals do, parents are the last line of defense, and that is not a line any society should be comfortable with.