Ex-State Department 'Sextortion' Culprit Gets 57 Months in Prison

A onetime State Department employee who used embassy computers to extract sexually explicit photos from women was sentenced to 57 months in federal prison on Monday, according to news reports.

Michael Ford, who was stationed in London from 2013-15, in December had pleaded guilty to nine counts of cyberstalking, seven counts of computer hacking to extort and one count of wire fraud, according to investigators for the Justice Department and State’s Diplomatic Security Service.

His nearly five-year sentence will be followed by three years of supervised release, U.S. District Judge Eleanor Ross in Atlanta decided. She granted him a delay in reporting to prison until August because his wife is expecting a baby in July, according to the Associated Press.

Ford—while on the job in London—used online aliases to target young females, many of them students in sororities with ambition to be models. Posing as a representative of a common Internet service provider’s “account deletion team,” he sent messages warning the women that their accounts would be canceled if they failed to provide their passwords. He then hacked into their accounts in search of nude photos, after which he threatened the women with exposure unless they helped him take additional explicit photos of attractive women in gym locker rooms or store changing rooms.

At the sentencing, friends and family described Ford as a doting husband. He apologized to his victims and told the judge he was depressed and wanted to be fired from his government job. “What I did was a low and cowardly act by a person who was desperate,” he said.

(Image via Claudio Divizia / Shutterstock.com)