Syracuse Sun

Richard Nejame, age 29, of Schenectady, New York, was sentenced to serve 240 months (20 years) in federal prison and will be followed by 25 years of supervised release for receiving and attempting to receive child pornography.

United States Attorney Carla B. Freedman and Craig L. Tremaroli, Special Agent in Charge of the Albany Field Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), made the announcement.

As part of his guilty plea, Nejame admitted that between October 2022 and May 1, 2023, he communicated with several minor females over various social media applications including Snapchat. Nejame further admitted that his online personas on social media claimed that he was a teenage boy. During Nejame’s online communications with the minor females, he encouraged them to take nude pictures and videos of themselves and send them to him. Once in receipt of these images and videos, Nejame directed the females to take more sexually explicit pictures and videos of themselves. He threatened to embarrass and expose the females by publishing their pictures and videos on the internet if they did not comply with his demands.

In addition to imprisonment and supervised release terms, Nejame will be required to register as a sex offender upon release from imprisonment.

The FBI’s Albany Division Child Exploitation and Human Trafficking Task Force investigated this case. The Task Force includes members from federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies. Assistant United States Attorneys Rick Belliss and Benjamin S. Clark prosecuted the case as part of Project Safe Childhood.

Launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice, Project Safe Childhood is led by United States Attorneys’ Offices and the Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS). Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state, and local resources to better locate, apprehend, and prosecute individuals who exploit children via the internet while identifying and rescuing victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit https://www.justice.gov/psc.