24-Year-Old Sentenced to 18 Years for Internet Crimes
| U.S. Attorney’s Office April 16, 2009 |
BIRMINGHAM, AL—JONATHAN WRYN VANCE, 24, of Auburn, Alabama, was sentenced to 216 months (18 years) in federal prison by United States District Court Judge R. David Proctor in Birmingham today. Judge Proctor also ordered VANCE to be placed on supervised release for a term of life after serving his prison term, to pay restitution to the victims, and to register as a sex offender. VANCE was also ordered not to have any unsupervised contact with children. The sentence is announced today by Alice H. Martin, U.S. Attorney, Northern District of Alabama, Leura G. Canary, U.S. Attorney,Middle District of Alabama, and Charles E. Regan, Acting Special Agent in Charge, Federal Bureau of Investigation.
On January 15, 2009, VANCE plead guilty to thirty-four criminal counts involving interstate extortion, interstate transportation in aid of extortion, fraud in connection with identification information and authentication features, attempted production of child pornography, and attempted enticement.
According to the Indictments and Plea Agreements, beginning on or about January, 2006 until June, 2008, VANCE repeatedly transmitted threatening communications to more than 50 minor females and young women located in Alabama, Pennsylvania, and Missouri. VANCE transmitted these threatening communications with the intent to extort their confidential sign-on information for various services, such as Facebook.com, MySpace.com, Hotmail.com, and Yahoo.com, as well as digital still images or webcam video of the victims exposing themselves and engaging in sexually explicit conduct.
VANCE would at first pretend to be a friend, acquaintance, or secret admirer of the victims, and would only reveal his identity if the victims answered a series of intimate personal questions. Once VANCE had the intimate information, he made demands which, if not complied with, threatened to ruin their reputations by transmitting the intimate information about them to their friends, church members and employers.