A Washington state man will rot in prison for two decades after posing as a teenager, pressuring girls as young as 12 to send him explicit images, and then using that material to blackmail them into sending more. The Justice Department said Monday that Joshua Henry Punt, 39, pleaded guilty to using Kik and Snapchat to find his victims. Using profile pictures of “youthful YouTube personalities,” Punt groomed the girls and pressured them into sending explicit photos and videos. When the teens tried to cut contact with him, he threatened to send the material to people they knew if they didn’t comply with his demands. The DOJ said victims were identified in New York, Arkansas, California, Texas, Nevada, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. When sentencing Punt, U.S. District Judge Benjamin H. Settle told him: “There are no words to express how serious this crime is... You could see the pain in those girls, and you continued to do it—to eight precious, innocent young girls—you tortured them.”
