A Plymouth man pleaded responsible in federal court docket in Boston to a brutal cyberstalking marketing campaign towards greater than half a dozen girls — and women — between 2008 and his arrest final yr.
“Enjoy Your Exposure You Naughty Bimbo. You Belong To The Internet,” is a pattern of the sorts of messages James Florence Jr. wrote to his victims underneath one in every of his many pretend accounts.
Florence, 37, of Plymouth, pleaded responsible to seven counts of cyberstalking and one rely of kid pornography. U.S. District Court docket Choose Richard G. Stearns scheduled sentencing for July 23.
The cyberstalking fees carry a most sentence of 5 years in jail and fines of up tp $250,000. Possession of kid pornography may land Florence in jail for as much as 20 years and would require him to register as a intercourse offender.
His harassment campaigns towards the ladies and women would immediate readers of his social media posts to “Post & Share Her Everywhere” and to “Make The (expletive) Famous,” in response to court docket paperwork. His actions had been “a chilling window into the dangers of online harassment and cyberstalking in the digital age,” then-U.S. Legal professional Joshua Levy wrote following Florence’s September 2024 arrest.
Florence used the pc expertise he honed in a tech profession at software program corporations and even a U.S. authorities contractor to focus on girls he knew personally. He would, prosecutors say, seize images they posted on-line after which manipulate them via packages like Photoshop and synthetic intelligence instruments to seem as nudes or in pornographic poses.
He would then add these altered photos to social media “imposter” accounts and tag the ladies’ s actual social media accounts to maximise the injury. Along with the harassment the ladies would obtain on-line following these posts, Florence would publish their actual private data together with dwelling addresses and locations of employment in order that others may goal them and degrade them offline.
The pretend accounts he would create could be extremely sexual and speak about sexual preferences, tales about intercourse toys and tools and invites for males to contact her for sexual encounters.
However some ploys had been extra dynamic, as described in a U.S. Legal professional’s workplace press launch:
“For one of the victims, Florence used the name, image and other personal identifying information to program at least three AI-driven chatbots to interact with strangers across multiple platforms in sexually explicit conversations and disclose how to contact or find the victim,” in response to the assertion.
Florence would himself enterprise into the true world to focus on his victims, as police present in his Plymouth dwelling dozens of pairs of girls’s underwear and socks he had stolen from a few of his victims.
That’s along with the 62 photos and 4 movies of kid pornography he had on his laptop of feminine victims between 8 and 15 years outdated.
