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Last updated on Tuesday, October 7, 2014
(INDIANAPOLIS) - A man who pleaded guilty in June to federal sex crimes has been sentenced to 28 years in prison, officials announced Monday.
23-year-old Austin Williams was arrested in January 2013 on a rape charge, and while investigators were serving a search warrant in the case, they found a cellphone with hundreds of sexually explicit images of young girls.
According to court documents, Williams used fake social media accounts and posed as a young woman to contact young girls in the Indianapolis area. He then would offer to trade sexually explicit images or video with the girls via Facebook or text messaging, investigators said.
Williams would then use the content to blackmail the girls, threatening to share the images unless the girls sent new pictures and videos, court documents said.
In some cases, Williams reportedly tricked the young girls into meeting with him in person and engaged them in illicit sexual activity. In one case, Williams is accused of following a 15-year-old girl home and raping her outside the house.
That rape report is what prompted Williams' January 2013 arrest.
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