A serial catfish abuser from Northern Ireland who caused one of his victims in the US to take her own life has been jailed for life with a minimum of 20 years.
Online predator Alexander McCartney, 26, had used the Snapchat social media platform to befriend teenage girls across the world, and convince them to send an explicit image.
Once he had secured a picture of his victims, he would then reveal the “catfish” and blackmail them into taking part in sex acts.
He admitted 185 charges involving 70 children, although a court has previously been told that the real number of victims is much higher.
McCartney, who posed as a young girl to befriend his vulnerable victims, is believed to be the UK’s most prolific catfish offender, with affected individuals identified in 30 countries across the world.
Twelve-year-old Cimarron Thomas from West Virginia in the US took her own life in May 2018 rather than comply with McCartney’s demands for her to involve her younger sister in sex acts.
Eighteen months later, her heartbroken father Ben Thomas also died by suicide.
The court heard that he would frequently target girls who were professing doubts about their sexual identity and body image, before persuading them to send a photo.
He would then go to the notes section of his phone where he had a pre-prepared statement which he would cut and paste into the conversation.
The message would typically say: “alright i used a fake camera snap app. i have your face pic and nudes. You are gonna do as i say for tonight and then ill leave after. But if you dont them im upoading everything online for everyone to see. understand?”
In several cases he would threaten to share the images with other paedophiles or would force his victims to involve family pets and objects.
In Cimarron’s case, she had been contacted by McCartney in May 2018 and blackmailed, but had returned to school believing the ordeal was over. However, the predator contacted her again, demanding she include her sister in the abuse.
Despite her pleading with him to stop and saying she would call the police and take her own life, he said he “did not care” and gave her a countodwn before threatening to send the images to the first person on her contact list, her father.
Cimarron’s little sister found her body slumped in her parents’ bedroom and she died that evening in hospital.
During a previous appearance, he pleaded guilty to manslaughter relating to Cimarron’s death.
He also admitted 59 counts of blackmail, dozens of charges related to making and distributing indecent photographs and scores of charges of inciting children to engage in sexual activity.
McCartney, originally from Lissummon Road outside Newry, Northern Ireland, used his technical knowledge as a computer science student to carry out his crimes.
His offending was carried out from the bedroom of his childhood home, with police estimating that he targeted about 3,500 children across 30 countries.
The scale of his offending has stunned even the most experienced investigators, with one describing it as a “paedophile enterprise”.
McCartney first became known to police in Northern Ireland in 2016 when he was arrested in relation to indecent images of children found on his electronic devices. At this stage, no victims had been identifIed and he was bailed. He was arrested again on similar offences in 2018.
Despite the attention of police and bail conditions, McCartney continued to offend. He replaced phones and laptops which had been seized.
However in 2019, Police Scotland contacted the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) to report that a 13-year-old girl was being groomed by an adult suspect, which led to his arrest. When police raided his home, he was in the middle of offending and Snapchat was open on his device, with hundreds of thousands of indecent images and videos of underage girls discovered.
In several of the videos seized by police, victims are seen pleading with McCartney to stop. One little girl repeatedly said she would kill herself and her mum was dying from cancer. He replied: “I do not give a shit about you or your mum.”
He told one victim who objected to his demands that he would get people to come to her house and rape her. Another who threatened to go to police was told: “I am secure, I have been doing this over a year.”
Upon his arrest, it became one of the largest catfishing investigations anywhere in the world and one of the biggest criminal indictments in Northern Ireland’s legal history, as well as the first case in the UK where a manslaughter victim resided abroad and had never met her killer in person.
Handing down a life sentence at Belfast Crown Court, Mr Justice O’Hara said that it was difficult to think of a “sexual deviant” who posed a greater risk than McCartney.
He said: “To my knowledge there has not been a case such as the present where a defendant has used social media on an industrial scale to inflict such terrible and catastrophic damage on young girls up to and including the death of a 12-year-old girl.
“The defendant was remorseless. He ignored multiple opportunities to stop. He ignored multiple pleas for mercy. He lied and lied and then lied again.”
The judge added: “In my judgment it is truly difficult to think of a sexual deviant who poses a greater risk than this defendant.”
Outside court, Detective Chief Superintendent Eamonn Corrigan, from the PSNI, said Alexander McCartney’s offending was on an “industrial scale”.
“I reflect on the judge’s comments, McCartney is a dangerous, relentless, cruel paedophile,” he said.
“There was nothing that was going to stop him, apart from putting him in jail.”
