Fort Myers, Florida – U.S. District Judge Sheri Polster Chappell has sentenced McEndy Alce (33, Immokalee) to 15 years in federal prison for production of child pornography. The court also ordered Alce to forfeit two iPhones and an iPod Touch that had been used to facilitate the offense.
Alce had pleaded guilty on April 30, 2019.
According to court documents, on November 18, 2015, Alce, using the email address tylerthecreator@hackermail.com, contacted a 16-year-old girl in California on her iPhone via iMessage. Alce informed the girl that he had hacked her account and instructed her to go to her Twitter account, where she discovered that nude photographs of herself, which had been stored on her phone, had indeed been posted to her Twitter account. Alce told the girl that he had just started posting the photos of her on her Twitter account and, he told her to log onto a video chat site and to change her clothes in front of the webcam. Alce then instructed the girl to log onto Skype, where he told her to remove her clothes for the Skype camera. He positioned her on a bed, and instructed her to remain there until he was finished. Alce told the victim to do what he said, and that, if she did, she would never hear from him again. The girl exposed herself to the webcam, as Alce instructed, until he sent her a message advising that he was done.
After the victim reported Alce to law enforcement, FBI agents located him in Immokalee. On May 3, 2016, a search warrant was executed at Alce’s home where he admitted to creating the email address that he had used to contact the victim. He also admitted to scamming multiple people online to get their passwords, including his victim in this case. Alce said that he duped the girl into giving him the password for her email address, and he admitted that he had communicated with the girl on Skype. Alce also admitted that he had tricked the minor, and that a video of the session with the girl could be on the hard drive of his laptop.
The forensic analysis of Alce’s iPhones and iPod Touch revealed messages in which he portrayed himself to be a member of the Snapchat security team, a member of the SKYPE security team, or a member with YOUNOW. The messages read “someone has attempted to change the password on your account,” and the individual was instructed to reply with her password “to disallow the change password to become active.”
This case was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation Innocent Images Task Force, which includes Charlotte County Sheriff’s Office, and with assistance from the FBI Office in Sacramento, California. It is being prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Yolande G. Viacava.
This is another case brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse. Led by the United States Attorneys’ Offices and the Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state, and local resources to locate, apprehend, and prosecute individuals who sexually exploit children, and to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.justice.gov/psc.
