Original subtitles

This programme contains some strong language and scenes which some viewers may find disturbing,

and deals with suicide and sexual abuse

I had, like, pretty loose internet rein, I guess, since I was little.

It's like the whole world is right there,

and you're curious about everything.

I played a lot of games, watched just a lot of videos.

Then sometimes, like, I would just, like, talk to random people,

because why not?

Virginia Beach was a pretty conservative town,

and it wasn't the town that you wanted to, like, come out,

unless you knew for sure.

Like, you shouldn't be open about it until you know,

because then you'll just get made fun of.

OK, this is so stupid, but I would, like, Google "girls kissing",

because I was like, "Hmm, like, what is this about?"

Like, "My other friends don't get, like, curious when they see

"two girls kissing, but I am. What does that mean?"

But it was late at night, and I was surfing the web,

and a pretty girl wanted to talk to me,

and that's what I wanted.

And...then it was not a pretty girl.

What's a catfish? No comment.

Come on, Alex, you know what a catfish is.

It was, "Now I've got this one picture,

"I will send these to your friends and family

"unless you send me more".

The first download shows me the largest number of

first-generation images to be captured on a device.

A guy that was my friend,

he is a monster.

Alex's exploitation of these girls

is getting worse and worse and worse.

I matched with this person, and they were like,

"Oh, I'm 13" - and I was 12, so that's not, like, crazy.

And we talked for a little bit,

and I think I said I was from, like, New York or something.

I usually lied, because I don't want people to know where I'm from.

And it was, like, friendly conversation at first, um,

but escalated pretty quickly.

Things get sexual.

Pictures from, like, the waist up,

and I'd never sent pictures like that before.

And I remember, they were really insistent on having pictures

with my face in it.

It was a little strange, but then I received a picture

with their face in it, and I was like, "It's fine".

And I sent one with my face in it.

But...then it was not good.

PHONE VIBRATES

And I was just like, "This is bad.

"This is bad."

VIBRATING CONTINUES

That's crazy, actually, why would you do that?

If these pictures are blasted all over the Internet,

I don't want to live in that world.

Like, that's terrifying.

And I was just so scared, cos I was 12, and I was smart,

and I had friends, and I thought I was gay, and I don't know.

It's like, it was just... actually crazy.

It was, it was...

Yeah.

I woke up in the morning, and I was like, "This is bad.

"And I feel like someone should know about this."

Like, "I don't want anybody to see my pictures".

I didn't really care about anything else at that point.

I went downstairs, it was before school.

I was ready to get on the school bus, and I was like,

"Mom, I know you're going to be mad at me,

"but I sent nudes to someone,

"and they were not who they said they were.

"I'm being blackmailed, and I don't know what to do."

And then, my mom was like,

"Well, damn!"

And so, we went to the police officer

that was stationed at our school.

And it was really upsetting, cos it opened a lot of judgment

in, like, a conservative town, like,

"Why were they sending pictures to a girl in the first place"?

And, like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

My phone got taken by the cops,

and then Mom got a call from the Homeland Security people,

and they were like, "This is bigger than you thought it was.

"And we need to talk to you."

My name is Paul Wolpert.

I'm a special agent with Homeland Security Investigations

in Norfolk, Virginia.

July of 2019, I was contacted by one of our local detectives.

They had gotten a complaint from a mother.

Her daughter had been contacted online by somebody

who was threatening the release of her images if she didn't make

more images for this individual.

We got the victim to come in with her mother.

My primary reasoning was to identify

who was on the other end of that conversation.

We don't know who it is or what else activity that they're doing.

It could've been another female.

It could've been another kid.

It could've been, you know, somebody that was playing around.

The local detective learned that the subject on the other end

of the conversation had resided in the UK.

Our office in London let me know that Northern Ireland had

an investigation of an individual that had been using

the same IP address.

I contacted Detective Neil McInnis.

They had identified a subject named Alex McCartney.

I've got a victim who's in Scotland.

Got a victim in New Zealand.

And then, the information starts coming through about

a victim in Virginia Beach.

What's the quickest way for me to get him charged?

Because if I know he's in prison

on remand, he's not doing any more harm.

OK. Let's go.

Six or seven of us got the warrant and drove out to Newry.

It was about 6.30 in the morning.

Rock up at the house.

Knock on the door. No answer.

Decided we'd kick the door in.

He's fast asleep in his bed,

and next to him is a smartphone.

Tap the screen of the smartphone.

And there it is.

Snapchat camera open.

Two-and-a-half hours earlier was his last victim.

Told him to wake up.

"Get up.

"You're under arrest.

"Again."

ELEVATOR: Door closing.

This case stands out, really,

because it's so big and so complicated.

The defendant had been spoken to by police before,

and that had not stopped him.

And when he was arrested in March,

his phones were taken.

But when police went back in July,

he had just got new phones

and kept going, so the pressure was pretty huge.

He's not going to stop until we make him stop.

What we had to do was uncover enough of the iceberg

that we could go to court to get him remanded into custody.

So, he went to prison,

and that gave us the time and space to keep working on the case.

July was the end of stage one.

The point we had to reach to get him in remand.

That was just the start, really.

The MO was really apparent really quickly.

Vulnerable young kids, 10 to 14 years old,

always females.

Location didn't seem to be an issue.

Alex seemed to be targeting young females that were

either bisexual or gay.

By sending an image of another victim,

he enticed them to send a nude picture of themselves.

Ordinarily, whenever you use Snapchat,

it notifies the other user you're making a recording.

He used a programme to mask the fact that he was actually

recording his interactions with them,

which is not something I've seen before.

So, he starts in a conversation of, like, age, sex, location.

They chat back, and then he sends a nude to them,

and then, they send a nude back.

He screenshots that without the child knowing.

The key thing here is the threat

that he's using on each occasion. Yeah.

It appears that he has a document

that is potentially copied and pasted. Or saved.

"All right, I'm a catfish. I have your nudes.

"You're going to do as I say for tonight,

"or I'll upload everything for everyone to see. Understand?"

The only reason he's got that on there is for speed.

You know, he's probably in conversation with four or five

children at any one time.

You seem to have this fascination with this name Chloe.

What is the relevance of Chloe?

No comment.

You don't tell any of these children that you're a 19, 20,

or 21-year-old male from Newry...

..sitting in his bedroom.

No comment.

I know you're sitting there and you say "no comment",

but I'm giving the opportunity now, Alex, to speak about this,

to be honest, to account for things.

You learn to deal with "no comments".

It's very rare that you get somebody that's going to talk to you

in an interview and be honest.

He knows what he's been doing.

He knows that he's caught.

He knows, when he was arrested,

what other information was starting to gather, and...

..you know, what's coming down the line for him.

He was slumped down in the chair, and head in the hands, and,

you know, never spoke a word.

Never said anything.

How did you know to make contact with this girl in New Zealand,

thousands of miles away?

No comment.

How do you do it, Alex?

How do you get in touch with all these people?

Do you remember your cousin?

Because she was terrified.

She was scared of what you were going to do, Alex.

Do you remember being in conversation with a 13-year-old

from Virginia Beach?

No comment.

Does she look over 18, Alex?

No comment. Not a chance, is there?

He seems to become a different person when he's on his phone,

on Snapchat.

If you laid a map on the floor,

he just seemed to go from one time zone to another time zone,

to another time zone.

And then, when he ran out of time zones, he slept...

..and then, do the same again.

Chloe, once again, has sent a picture of herself.

Where has that image been obtained from?

No comment. Could it be that it's an image of one of the three

that we've just discussed there?

No comment.

Alex's level of exploitation of these girls

is getting worse and worse and worse.

The depth of depravity took on a whole different level,

a whole different level.

He really started to ramp up.

No boundaries.

This is an ongoing investigation.

At the moment, we have 266 victims.

There's six in Australia, two in Belgium, 12 in Canada,

one in Colombia, Croatia, Denmark,

Germany, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania,

Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand,

Norway, Poland, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden,

and 214 in the USA.

Those figures are going to rise.

Neil had told me about the amount of victims that we potentially

were running into.

His examiners are finding thousands of different victims.

Because of the volume, I offered up to help further

the victim ID process, because Snapchat's a little bit

more responsive to US-based law enforcement.

The investigation just kept growing.

Another device was looked at, and now we have more.

And then we have more, and then we have more.

But where kids are being victimised,

you don't want to sit on that.

We are going to track them down and figure out who they are.

There was over 100 agents that identified and set up interviews

with these victims.

I'm going to pull up some documents here for the identification

of our victim in Oregon.

What was unique is the volume -

about two weeks of activity.

We identified her based on her internet history.

And Snapchat came back with some information on her account.

She was cooperative when they came.

She was willing to speak about her interactions online.

Mm-hm.

Mm-hm.

Mm-hm. Mm-hm.

Mm-hm.

This is a conversation with a 14-year-old.

She's in Oregon.

This one's unusual because it goes on for such a long period of time.

Two weeks.

But this girl, he forms a real bond with her,

to the point where he does tell her that he loves her.

Occurred between the 30th of November, 2017,

and the 11th of December, 2017,

and the Snapchat user was Chloe1313x.

You can see the size of the conversation, Alex -

can you look at that, please?

No comment. I'm not asking you to comment.

I'm asking you to look at the size of the conversation.

Alex, give me the courtesy of looking.

Do you remember this conversation, Alex? No comment.

Because I would say 90% of that conversation is you telling her

about your feelings for her.

You're, like, really possessive.

Or certainly, Chloe1313x - who I believe is you -

is really possessive.

Constantly telling her that you love her.

Constantly asking what she's doing, about your future together,

how you're going to meet, how you want to marry her,

you want to cuddle her,

how you'll perform sexual acts on her.

It was a...

It was a surprising conversation to find.

It's the only time that I've seen that,

in all the conversations that I've read,

I actually think Alex believed they formed a relationship.

All these horrible acts of manipulation -

and yet, he then is having a normal conversation thread

into the middle of that.

And he was 20.

How did he ever think that was normal?

"My favourite colour is pastel purple.

"Favourite animal is an otter."

Do you remember all this, Alex? No comment.

You talk about TV shows.

You talk about all sorts of childish rubbish,

to be quite honest.

Erm, all meaningless.

Well...it obviously meant something to you at the time.

And significantly, Alex, this is the child that you use

as your profile picture,

then going forward, to entice all these other kids,

all the ones that we've spoken about.

It's almost as though he is infatuated with her.

And this is the girl whose images he would then go on to use

to send to all the other victims.

I don't know if it's that image or that one.

Or is it - is it that one?

She looks really young, though, doesn't she, Alex?

You really did have feelings for her, didn't you, Alex?

No comment. And then, you...

Pretended to be her.

And then, you pretended to be her.

He used my photos to catfish other girls,

and it does make me angry.

I think doing this will help me a lot, too, to feel closure.

Just feeling like I'm wrapping up,

like, this chapter of my life.

Like, and then, once this is out, I'll just feel relief.

I had sent nude photos with my face in it.

That's how it started,

like, the blackmailing.

My heart dropped out of my chest.

And I just felt, like, my whole world collapsing around me.

"This is the end, if those photos got out."

It was very scary.

Chloe wouldn't want me to leave the chat,

so I had to leave the chat open.

I felt like I was always on my toes.

I did everything she told me to,

but I would try to get out of it by saying, like, you know,

"My battery's - it's almost dead.

"Like, I need to go charge it."

Just to try to get her to stop.

But she was threatening to send them to all of my Instagram followers.

I just felt dirty.

Tore some of my innocence out,

just by sending those photos.

I did feel trapped,

and I didn't feel like I could talk to anyone.

I was kind of just asking myself, like, "Who's doing this?

"Is it someone I know?"

At the time, I was questioning if maybe it was people from

my school doing this to me as, like, a prank.

It felt very real.

I don't remember, like, the timeline.

I just kind of remember it ended.

I do still feel paranoid every once in a while,

and I never knew if they would contact me again,

or if they knew possibly where I lived.

I'd have dreams about her. Nightmares.

I remember one where she was, like, trying to get into my house,

but we were, like, on the third floor,

and she was somehow coming in through the window.

I would just see her face, and it'd just be that.

There wouldn't be anything else.

Chloe finding me in real life,

I think that was what I was most scared of.

Like, this happening face-to-face.

Yeah.

We looked at all of the devices and the escalation in his offending.

He is really learning his craft.

You'll never, ever get the impact of what he's actually done

unless you see it.

The pain he's causing them physically and emotionally

by the actions he's making them do.

It's just constant demands.

It gets worse, and it just goes on and on, and on.

The depravity, it was just relentless.

Absolutely relentless.

We're now entering into a whole different arena.

Ten-year-olds, two-year-old siblings,

no level of degrading that child was ever enough for him.

And how long have you been using each of these accounts?

No comment.

And why are they all in female names?

No comment.

What's the need for a fake camera on a computer?

No comment.

Do you remember that child? No comment.

How old do you think that child is, Alex?

No comment.

Alex, do me the decency of looking at the screen.

I've got every single photograph and every single video.

Why do you do that?

No comment.

Is it for sexual gratification?

No comment.

Is it for power?

No comment. Is it because you can do that?

Because you can manipulate these young kids?

No comment.

This is a 14-year-old child.

She sends you a number of voice clips.

TEARFULLY:

And you just haven't stopped.

NEWS ANCHOR: A 21-year-old Newry man has appeared in court,

accused of a litany of online child sex offences.

PHONE BUZZES AND CHIMES

I was just sitting in my room, playing games,

and I got a message on my phone from my friend saying,

"Check the TV, Alex is on the news."

And I was like, "What the fuck?"

The first thing your head goes to,

when somebody says something like that, is, "He's been hurt.

"You know, he's been in a car crash. Something's happened."

Then I turned on the TV,

and I remember just feeling numb.

I started to cry.

My mum had come in, she'd heard me, and she was like,

"Well, what's going on"?

I said, "Mum, it's...it's Alex."

I just remember her wrapping her arms around me, and I just...

..I just cried.

And it all sort of went into a blur after that,

and I don't remember... what happened the next few hours.

NEWS ANCHOR: Among the charges Alexander McCartney faces

are possession, making, and distributing indecent images

of children and sexual activity with a child.

Denying bail, District Judge Eamonn King said,

"The court has heard that this is the largest investigation

"of its kind in the UK.

"There are no bail conditions that could manage the risk."

When all of this first came out,

I-I near felt guilty reading it.

Nobody felt like they could talk about what Alex did,

just didn't speak about it at all.

"All the charges are alleged to have been committed on various dates

"between March 15th, 2014, and July 31st."

Would've made him about 15 when it all started.

He was still a teenager.

"Child abuse images, some with children forced to put

"their underpants in their mouths,

"were just the tip of the iceberg."

Mental.

I didn't know that he was pretending to be girls.

"The target age of children from 10 to 12 years old,

"and mostly females."

I didn't know that they were that young.

TEARFULLY: I didn't know that they were that young.

I'm so sorry, I just think about it,

like, one day, I'm going to be a mum.

And, like, imagine finding out your ten-year-old's been asked to,

like, put their knickers in their mouth...

Those poor wee girls.

SHE SOBS QUIETLY

January of 2021.

I'm thinking that we're almost done.

We've got everybody, we think, identified,

we're going to be able to.

The end was in sight.

And then pops up a 12-year-old that lives in West Virginia.

Viewing the images, you could see this little girl,

where she's happy - the threats start,

you can see the scaredness in her face.

She eventually is crying,

so you can just see how her emotional state degrades.

Um, so it was important that we find her.

I was able to finally get her name after multiple subpoenas,

her internet account information.

We finally actually get a real name.

And when I do a search of it,

I get a news article that was very concerning.

This kind of changed things.

After that, it was contacting Neil, in Northern Ireland,

to let him know that things have escalated.

I really wanted to make sure he knew as quick as I found out,

because that was going to turn things a little bit more serious.

It wasn't just the online communications.

McCartney created a situation for this, this individual,

and it went as bad as it could get.

Alex, he'd been on remand just over 12 months.

I'm in court on the 22nd of January.

5.00.

I get an email from America.

It was like my worst fear...

..coming true.

One of the victims has taken her own life.

Why?

"Why" was the biggest question.

TEARFULLY: Why?

Just did not fit the facts of our life.