Canadian Gets 33 Years for Targeting 145 U.S. Children

Eight Years. One Fake Identity. 145 Children.

For at least eight years, Ramanan Pathmanathan built fake personas on Instagram and Facebook Messenger, presenting himself as a teenage boy from New Jersey. He used those identities to contact children across the United States, coerce them into producing explicit material, and then threaten to destroy them if they stopped complying.

On May 27, a federal judge in Washington, D.C., sentenced Pathmanathan, 40, of Toronto, Canada, to 33 years in federal prison. That sentence will not begin until after he finishes a 12-year term he is already serving in Canada for similar crimes.

The Scope of What Prosecutors Confirmed

According to court documents and the announcement from U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro, Pathmanathan contacted at least 145 children between March 2014 and the day of his arrest on March 10, 2021. Some of those children were as young as six years old.

He demanded they perform explicit acts on video. He recorded those acts and saved them. When children refused to continue or blocked his accounts, he threatened to send the recordings to their friends and family.

‘This defendant spent years methodically hunting children online,’ Pirro said in a statement. ‘He targeted more than 145 victims, some as young as six, and subjected them to horrors no child should ever experience.’

How He Was Caught

Canadian authorities searched Pathmanathan’s home on March 10, 2021, the same day he exploited what would be his final victim, saving a file at 5:09 a.m. before his arrest later that day.

He pleaded guilty in Canada in 2022 to similar charges and received a 12-year sentence there. He was subsequently extradited to the United States, where he pleaded guilty on January 30, 2026, to one count of production of child pornography and one count of coercion and enticement of a minor.

The Sentence and What It Means

The 33-year U.S. sentence will run consecutively - meaning it begins only after the Canadian sentence ends. Combined, Pathmanathan faces more than four decades of imprisonment. He will also serve 10 years of supervised release upon completion and will be a registered sex offender for life.

Prosecutors had sought 40 years. The judge’s sentence of 33 years amounts to what Pirro noted in court filings was ‘more than three months in prison for each victim’ - a framing that underscores the scale of harm across a nearly decade-long campaign.

The Platform Problem Behind the Case

Pathmanathan’s operation ran almost entirely on Instagram and Facebook Messenger. Both platforms have implemented protections against this type of contact, but investigators and child safety advocates say the volume of accounts and the ease of creating fake identities make enforcement difficult.

The FBI has documented a significant rise in financially motivated sextortion targeting minors, with perpetrators located primarily outside the United States. In cases like Pathmanathan’s, the coercion is not financial but sexual - and the victims are among the youngest and most vulnerable targets identified in federal prosecutions.

What Parents and Caregivers Should Know

The FBI’s online safety guidance for families includes a consistent message: children who are being coerced online are not in trouble - the person doing the coercing is. Shame and fear are tools predators use deliberately to keep victims silent.

The Department of Justice’s Office of International Affairs provided significant assistance in securing Pathmanathan’s extradition and prosecution, demonstrating what U.S. Attorney Pirro called a commitment to ensuring ‘international borders’ do not serve as protection for those who target American children.

Anyone with concerns about online exploitation of minors can contact the FBI at 1-800-CALL-FBI or submit a tip at tips.fbi.gov.

References: Canadian sentenced 33 years sextortion scheme targeted 145 children US | Ramanan Pathmanathan Toronto man sentenced sexual exploitation