A 32-year-old Binghamton, N.Y., man who posed online as a teenage girl, was sentenced in federal court on Thursday, May 9, for attempting to produce child pornography by tricking children – including three victims in Sedalia – into sending him nude images of themselves.
A news release posted on the Sedalia Police Department’s Facebook page from the website justice.gov says Brandon David Cuddihe was sentenced to 30 years in federal prison without parole. The court also sentenced Cuddihe to 30 years of supervised release following incarceration.
On October 16, 2018, Cuddihe pleaded guilty to two counts of attempting to produce child pornography. Cuddihe admitted that he posed on Facebook as a 14-year-old girl named “Hannah Richards.” Using that false identity, he conversed with more than 150 people, many of whom were between 10 and 16 years old. Three minors- two 10-year olds and a teenager- are from the Sedalia area. The mother of one of those victims contacted the Sedalia Police Department when she learned that her 10-year-old daughter had sent nude photos and videos via Facebook Messenger. Federal agents were able to identify and interview eight additional victims.
Using the “Hannah Richards” Facebook account, Cuddihe told investigators he would pick a random individual to befriend. Cuddihe would go through all of their friends and add a bunch of their friends to his list of friends. If an individual accepted his friend request, then he would begin chatting with them through Facebook Messenger. In some cases, according to court documents, Cuddihe redistributed a victim’s images in order to convince other children to produce child pornography. The “Hanna Richards” Facebook account is over 2,000 pages long, and is dedicated almost entirely to soliciting pornographic images from children.
This case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Ashley S. Turner. It was investigated by the FBI, the Sedalia Police Department, the Binghamton, N.Y., Police Department, and the Broome County, N.Y., Sheriff’s Department.
Project Safe Childhood
This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse. Led by the United States Attorneys’ Offices and the Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state, and local resources to locate, apprehend, and prosecute individuals who sexually exploit children, and to identify and rescue victims.
For more information about Project Safe Childhood, visit www.usdoj.gov/psc. For more information about Internet safety education, visit www.usdoj.gov/psc and click on the tab “resources.”