A Kennington man who posed as a model agency scout to manipulate children into sending indecent photographs has been convicted.
Ishmael Duncan, 24, was accused of exploiting 28 female victims, some as young as nine, although investigators believe he contacted close to 10,000 children online.
He appeared at Inner London Crown Court on August 21, where he admitted to 42 of the counts.
Yesterday (September 14) he admitted to a further eight counts. He will be sentenced on December 1.
His tactic was to approach potential victims via Snapchat to ask if they were interested in becoming models for well-known fashion brands.
The girls, who lived in the UK, US, Canada and Australia, would be asked for their age and personal details before he requested clothed images or videos.
To build trust, he would lead them through a lengthy interview process, and send them legitimate-looking contracts featuring the impersonated brands’ logos.
Duncan would then request topless photos, saying he needed to assess victims’ body shapes, and use them as a base for editing in potential clothes to be modelled.
Girls who expressed concerns were told the photos would be deleted after editing. Some were told they’d be ‘blacklisted’ from modelling if they didn’t comply.
Duncan contacted victims using multiple accounts and adopted different personas within the model agency to portray authenticity.
Aliases included ‘Callum’, the photographer and ‘Mark’, the general manager of the preteen models division.
He then created a new account to contact the same victims, sometimes months later, threatening to expose the images unless they agreed to send more images.
The National Crime Agency (NCA) began its investigation when two sisters in the US reported being threatened after sending explicit images to one of the accounts.
Through the analysis of IP data, the NCA was able to link Duncan to all the accounts. He was arrested in July 2021 at his home.
Separate from posing as a model scout, the NCA found he sometimes targeted other victims claiming to be a child of a similar age, requesting sexual images and videos.
Duncan blackmailed a 14-year-old girl with learning difficulties who sent him images, and also offered her $1,000 to engage in a sexual act with her brother.
Officers recovered 19,120 indecent images of children categories A-C (A being the most severe) from his electronic devices and cloud storage.
Duncan was charged with 53 counts including causing or inciting a child under 13 to engage in sexual activity (penetrative and non-penetrative), blackmail, sexual communication with a child, indecent and prohibited images of children (making and possession) and possession of extreme pornographic images.
NCA Operations Manager Martin Ludlow said: “Ishmael Duncan cruelly preyed on young girls who had dreams of becoming models.
“The threatening messages he sent were chilling and showed his callous disregard for the victims he exploited for his own sexual gratification in this case.
“The NCA worked closely with overseas partners to identify and safeguard victims, a number of whom provided evidence against Duncan.
“We will continue to operate online and internationally to target those offenders who pose the most serious risk to children.”