A Long Island creep pleaded guilty this week to running a sick “sextortion” scheme — in which he threatened to blackmail more than 30 women with revenge porn unless they sent him more explicit photos, prosecutors said.
Joseph Iorio, 21, of Holtsville, is expected to face up to five years🌌 in prison for extorting the explicit images from the women, in their teens and early 20s, and threatening to share them, Suffolk County District Attorney Timothy Sini said Friday.
“We can only imagine the type of fear, isolation and desperation that these women must feel when they receive a message showing that someone they don’t know has an image of them naked or performing a sex act, and that if they don’t do what the person says, those images are going to be sent to their family or to the pu💟blic,” Sini said in a statement. “That’s how these sick, sadistic offenders are able to get girls and women to do these acts that are against their will and that are damaging to them, both physically and emotionally.”
One of the victims claimed that Iorio,𓂃 who had identified himself as “Luke As,” sent her partially nude photographs of herself in a Facebook message, prosecutors said. Iorio demanded that the woman send additional photos, or he would fire off the explicit images, said the DA’s office, which was first notified of the crime back in July.
Some of the women were forced to act as virtual sex slaves — and Iorio demanded that several of them perform sex acts on themselves that resulted in injury, .
In one disturbing incident, Iorio ordered a woman to sodomize ꦯherself with a screwdriver, according to th꧅e report.
“It’s a modern day form of sexual torture,” Sini said.
Iorio was busted on July 18, and charged with fourth-degree grand larceny for the 🌠extortion.
Investigators at the DA’s office also learned that Iorio was the moderator of an online forum where users would upload nude images of young women — along with identifying information, such as their names, hometowns and schools. Using their personal information, Iorio was able to track down his victims on social media and attempt to extort them for even more images and videos, prosecutors said.
And Iorio had also been extorting women on Facebook under the name “Mike Cosgrove,” investigators said.
He is scheduled to be sentenced in front of Judge Fernando Camach▨o on May 2.