A Peters Township High School senior is behind bars in connection with an elaborate scheme through which police said he solicited and collected nude and pornographic images and videos of teenage boys.
Police said Zachariah A. Meyers, 18, used fake social media profiles to communicate with the boys and coerced one of them, 15, to have sex with adult men, video record the encounters and send the evidence to him, according to court papers.
Meyers was arrested Friday. He is facing 304 criminal charges in Washington County Court including trafficking in minors, child pornography, sexual extortion and related offenses.
Attorney Lisle Weaver said Friday night he was carefully reviewing the allegations and preparing for a preliminary hearing on Feb. 27. He declined further comment.
Peters Township police said they learned in December of a large-scale operation involving catfishing and sextortion upon interviewing 30 boys. Twenty-one of them reported sending explicit images and videos to social media accounts that turned out to be fake.
Police believe Meyers was behind those accounts, based on information they received through search warrants about IP addresses, email addresses and account registration information, according to court papers.
The boys, ages 14 to 17, had similar stories, police said: they began communicating with an account by the name of “Claire Muave.”
Some of the teens reported the account demanded money or gift cards in exchange for the sexual videos and images they shared being kept private, police said.
Meyers is accused of using photographs found on the internet to create fake social media profiles to communicate with the boys.
At the time of his arrest, a search of his cellphone revealed images, usernames and contacts that matched up with the reports authorities had received, according to court papers.
Meyers was being held at the Washington County Prison without bail.