An Abbotsford man has been sentenced to nine months in prison and two years of probation for the sextortion of a teenage girl.
Jesse Toews received his sentence Thursday in Port Coquitlam provincial court, according to the Port Moody Police Department, which conducted the investigation that led to the charges against him.
Toews had previously pleaded guilty to publication of an intimate image without consent and fraudulently using a computer password to commit an offence.
In December 2022, the PMPD said it had arrested Toews after a year-long investigation.
At the time, police said they had been contacted in October 2021 by a “young female” who said someone had “obtained her password-protected intimate images from a cloud-based platform” and “threatened to distribute the images if she didn’t send additional intimate images.”
The PMPD would not confirm the girl’s age due to privacy concerns, but did say she was a teen at the time of the alleged offence.
“While this was a highly complex investigation, our detectives were tenacious and able to bring this matter before the courts,” said Const. Sam Zacharias in a news release announcing the sentence Friday.
“We understand that these investigations do not always have the same outcome, but we do encourage those who have become the victim of a sextortion to call police immediately.”
