Web of Make Believe, a new documentary series on Netflix, premiered last week and investigated five high-profile cases of cybercrime. The six-part series looks at how some people have exploited the internet to damage their life, from the Wichita swatting of 2017 to hacker financial crimes. Episode 4 focuses on an extortionist named Ryan Vallee.
Web of Make Believe, Part 4 relates the story of how New Hampshire police tracked down and arrested Ryan Vallee, a man who had been blackmailing adolescent girls into giving him pornographic photos and breaking into their social media profiles.
Who is this Ryan Vallee, and where has he gone? Detailed information is provided below.
Ryan Vallee is a cybercriminal who admitted to cyberstalking, computer hacking to extort, as well as interstate threats after he coerced underage girls into emailing him naked photos beginning in 2011.
The New Hampshire guy was only 23 years old when he was sentenced to prison for extorting young women online for sexually graphic photos. He used aliases like “Seth Williams” and “James McRow” to communicate with the victims and eventually hack into their social media accounts and lock them out if they didn’t comply with his demands.
In one incident depicted in the video, Vallee is shown hacking into a victim’s Amazon account and using their purchase information and shipping address to give them sex related things.
In some cases, Vallee threatened his victims with violence via anonymous messaging platforms if they hadn’t sent him pictures, whereas in others, he hacked into their Facebook and email accounts to collect sexually explicit pictures of them and close friends and sent them to the victims’ relatives.
According to Wired, all of the victims of 19-year-old sextortionist Christopher Vallee attended the same New Hampshire high school as he did.
After Reader’s Digest reported that federal prosecutors dropped extortion charges against Vallee in October 2013, the charges were dropped. As the investigators gathered more data, they realized that every one of the places he had logged in from belonged to, or was located near, someone in his immediate family or circle of friends.
Allegedly perpetrating acts of severe identity theft, electronic fraud and abuse, and making threats across state lines, Vallee was accused by federal authorities in 2015. A year after his victim reported him online pestering her again, he was released on bail and given an internet restriction. Secret Service operatives located him and arrested him once more.
In 2017, he entered a guilty plea to 31 charges and was given an eight-year federal prison term as a result of his actions.
Where is Ryan J. Vallee at this time?
In spite of Vallee’s eight-year prison term, the Federal Bureau of Prisons records show that he was released from confinement on January 20, 2022, when he was just 28 years old.
