A 40-year-old Toronto man has been sentenced to 33 years in a U.S. prison for running a massive, years-long online sex extortion campaign against more than 145 American children.Ramanan Pathmanathan pleaded guilty in January to charges of producing child pornography and coercion and enticement of a minor and was set to receive federal sentencing Wednesday. The new 33-year U.S. sentence will be served consecutively to his 12-year Canadian sentence in 2022 for similar crimes, meaning his U.S. prison sentence will not begin until his Canadian sentence is completed.After his release, Parsmanathan will spend 10 years under supervision and will be placed on the sex offenders’ register. U.S. prosecutors initially recommended a 40-year sentence. He must also pay at least $3,000 in restitution to each victim.“This defendant spent years methodically pursuing children online. He targeted more than 145 victims, some as young as six years old, subjecting them to horrors that no child should have to experience,” U.S. Attorney Jeanine Ferris Pirro wrote in an official statement.Pathmanathan ran his plan for seven years from a desktop computer in the bedroom of a Toronto home he shared with his parents and brother. He used platforms such as Instagram and Facebook to create a fictional online persona, pretending to be a teenage boy in New Jersey to gain the trust of vulnerable children aged 11 to 17.Once contact was established, Pashmanathan “asked the underage victim to perform sexually explicit acts while video chatting with him. He directed them to expose their genitals and engage in sexual acts with dogs, siblings and other relatives,” the statement detailed.To instruct the victims on what to do, “in almost all of his video chats with underage victims, Pasmanathan would send the children photos of adults performing sexual acts, showing them how to do what he asked.”Parsmanathan screen-recorded the video calls and collected a large collection of explicit files on his computer. When children tried to cut off contact, block his accounts or refuse to cooperate, he engaged in systematic blackmail, threatening to distribute recorded videos to their family and school friends.An international investigation began when the mother of an American victim contacted local police. Investigators successfully traced Parsmanathan’s digital footprint and IP address to his residence in Canada.Law enforcement raided the Toronto property on March 10, 2021. Pashmanathan had been actively exploiting his victims before his arrest and saved explicit video files of a 13-year-old girl at 5.09am that day.After his first conviction and sentencing in Canada, Pasmanathan tentatively surrendered to U.S. authorities in December 2025 to face a separate federal trial in Colombia.“For years, he hid in another country behind a fabricated online persona and used manipulation, threats and fear to force unsuspecting teenagers to perform and engage in sexually explicit conduct, robbing them of their innocence,” said Assistant Attorney General A. Tysen Duva of the U.S. Department of Justice. “We will hold accountable anyone who preys on our children, including those who commit such acts behind a computer screen, to ensure victims are protected and treated with the dignity they deserve.”“
