Speaking through a Burmese interpreter, a Penn Hills man on Thursday admitted to extorting young girls in several states into sending him nude images and later videos of themselves engaging in sex acts under threat of exposing the images to others online.
Kaung Myat Kyaw, 23, who lives on Jefferson Road but has been in jail since his arrest in 2021, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court to seven counts related to coercion of minors.
Kyaw had originally been charged by complaint following an FBI investigation, then indicted in 2021 and again this year as prosecutors gathered more evidence.
From August 2020 through September 2021, Kyaw tricked girls into sending him nude photos. Once he had them, he threatened to send the images to the girls’ families and friends in an effort to extort them into participating in what he called a “seven-day challenge” during which he would demand that they produce increasingly “depraved sexual imagery,” in the words of the U.S. attorney’s office.
The FBI arrested Kyaw in November 2021 in relation to the phishing scheme on Snapchat that victimized girls in Buffalo, Pittsburgh and Virginia.
The case began in August 2021, when agents in Pittsburgh found out that police in Fairfax County, Virginia, and Buffalo were investigating someone using the names “savnxh,” “jokerxkris” and other monikers in a social media sextortion plot in the U.S. and overseas.
In Virginia, a 16-year-old girl told police in September 2020 that she was being extorted by “savnxh” for sex pictures she stored on her phone. She blocked the account but was then contacted by “jokerxkris,” who threatened to distribute her sex pictures to all of her social media contacts unless she sent him more.
But he upped the ante, demanding that she record herself masturbating and send him the videos. She did and sent him 20 videos.
In Rochester, New York, a similar scenario played out. There, a 15-year-old girl said someone gained access to her Snapchat account through a phishing scheme. She told cops she received a text saying someone had accessed her account. She followed the reset instructions provided and unknowingly sent her username and password.
She then received a friend request from “krxs.com,” who told her he’d hacked her account and accessed her nudes in a file she kept called “My Eyes Only.” The hacker threatened her, saying he had her images and that “if you block me, I will send them to everyone even your friends from school.” He likened himself to the Joker, Batman’s enemy, saying he was a “psychopath” like the Joker but a “perverted” one who liked to be in control.
The girl’s mother found out what was going on and called the local sheriff.
A girl from Collier, in the Pittsburgh region, also was among the victims.
The FBI tracked down the online identifiers and discovered they all led back to Kyaw in Penn Hills. After agents raided his house and arrested him, he told them he had learned to hack Snapchat accounts from someone else online and agreed to provide the conspirator with images of naked girls.
His technique was simple: He would send a fake Snapchat message to a girl, saying there was suspicious activity on her account. To reset the account, she had to provide her username and password. Once she did, he was in.
Kyaw told agents he accessed a new victim on Snapchat once a week, according to an FBI affidavit.
A review of his iCloud account uncovered the Collier victim, a 16-year-old who had received texts from Kyaw.
The FBI also found a script on Kyaw’s phone from the “Snapchat Support Team” informing users that someone had accessed their accounts. The Collier girl had received a text with that script.
U.S. District Judge Robert Colville scheduled sentencing for Feb. 24, 2024.
Kyaw faces at least 15 years in federal prison and could get life. He remains in U.S. custody.
Torsten covers the courts for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, but he's currently on strike. Reach him at jtorsteno@gmail.com.
