Man sentenced to 16 years for coercing minor on GTA Online to send explicit photos

A Georgia man has been sentenced to 16 years in federal prison after coercing a young child he met in GTA Online to send him indecent photos.

On May 9, 2021, it was explained in court that Keyshawn Omar Cooper, 21, of Waynesboro, GA, had communicated with an 11-year-old in Missouri, persuading the victim to engage in sexually explicit conduct for the purpose of creating visual depictions that the victim then sent to Cooper.

The child’s mother discovered what was happening and reported it to Missouri police, who enlisted the FBI to help them hunt down Cooper, who had been pretending to be a young girl to persuade the child to send the photos.

Those images, along with those of other children, were found on a seized phone.

Cooper was sentenced to 200 months in prison after previously pleading guilty to Production of Child Pornography, said Jill E. Steinberg, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Georgia.

U.S. District Court Chief Judge J. Randal Hall also ordered Cooper to pay $3,000 in restitution, and to serve 15 years of supervised release and register as a sex offender after completion of his prison term.

The 11-year-old child had been coerced into sending indecent photos to a grown man that they had met in Grand Theft Auto Online.

“This predatory crime represents a nightmare scenario for parents whose children connect with others to play games over the internet,” said U.S. Attorney Steinberg. “Thanks to the vigilance of one of those parents and diligent law enforcement partners, Keyshawn Cooper is no longer a danger to children.”

The fear of many parents is the threat that being online can possess. Despite technological advances in child safety over the years, there is still a lot on the internet that parents will want to protect their children from.