Ramanan Pathmanathan, a 40-year-old man from Toronto, Canada, was sentenced to 33 years in federal prison for operating a years-long sextortion scheme that targeted more than 145 children across the United States, some as young as six years old.
Chief Judge James E. Boasberg of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia handed down the sentence after Pathmanathan pleaded guilty on Jan. 30, 2026, to one count of production of child pornography and one count of coercion and enticement of a minor.
In addition to the prison term, he was ordered to serve 10 years of supervised release, register as a sex offender, and pay restitution of at least $3,000 per victim. U.S. prosecutors had originally sought a 40-year sentence, which they noted would have amounted to more than three months in prison per victim, according to People.
The 33-year U.S. sentence will run consecutively to the 12-year prison term Pathmanathan is currently serving in Canada, where he pleaded guilty to similar offenses on Oct. 27, 2022.
He was temporarily transferred to American custody in December 2025 to face the separate federal proceedings in Washington, D.C., despite having appealed his extradition.
Between at least March 2014 and his arrest on Mar. 10, 2021, a period of roughly seven years, Pathmanathan posed online as a teenage boy from New Jersey named "Brett," primarily using Instagram and Facebook Messenger to contact young girls and boys. He operated the scheme from a desktop computer inside his bedroom of a Toronto home he shared with his parents and brother.
Canadian law enforcement raided the residence and arrested him in 2021, with records showing he was actively exploiting a victim at 5:09 a.m. on the morning of his arrest, having just saved an explicit video of a 13-year-old girl.
During video chats, Pathmanathan directed victims to engage in sexually explicit conduct and sent them images of adults performing sexual acts to show them what he was demanding, Global News reported.
When victims refused to comply or blocked his social media accounts, he threatened to send their images to their friends and family. Investigators noted that he maintained detailed records of his victims, including their ages and social media followers.
The investigation was initially triggered after a victim's mother contacted local authorities, who traced Pathmanathan's IP address to his Toronto residence.
The FBI Houston Child Exploitation and Human Trafficking Task Force played a central role in building the federal case and securing his extradition, with agents describing him as one of the most prolific child predators and sextortionists the bureau had ever encountered.
Federal investigators have said they believe Pathmanathan may have hundreds of victims across at least five countries, as per Click2Houston.
Originally published on Lawyer Herald
