Owner of Indiana ISP gets charged with 'sextortion' of minors

The owner of an interner service provider company in Indiana has been charged with the 'sextortion' of minors and according to reports, hundreds of children may have been involved.

It is sometimes scary how the internet can be such an unsafe place for our children and a recent episode in Indiana has proven just that. The owner of an internet service provider company based in Indiana was recently arrested for the 'sextortion' of minors. The alleged suspect, identified as Richard Leon Finkbiner, is 39-years-old and he is located in Brazil, Ind., which lies around 50 miles southwest of Indianapolis.

Richard Leon Finkbiner was charged in a federal complaint launched last week in which it was said that Finkbiner was sexually exploiting children. The complaint involved two 14-year-old boys, but upon further investigation, it was discovered that there were hundreds of others involved. The FBI started investigating the complaint and discovered thousands of explicit videos and images of young boys on Finkbiner's personal computer.

The 'sextortion' scheme employed by Finkbiner was foolproof to capture young boys and make them do things that they otherwise would have preferred not to. Finkbiner used the pseudonym "Josh Swaim" to create a fake account on the internet. He would then make friends with young boys on social networking sites and capture their sexually explicit videos they had uploaded on what they thought was an anonymous video chat site. Finkbiner would then store these videos and later blackmail the boys. He would ask for more explicit videos to be sent to him and if they failed to comply, he used to threatened to send these videos to their family or friends. Since the boys who he targetted were between the ages of 14 to 16 years, they would easily fall for his traps and this vicious cycle would continue.

The FBI used the IP addresses to track it back to Clay County Internet in Brazil. The records revealed that the Clay County Internet was an Indiana based business and its owner and president was Richard Leon Finkbiner. Finkbiner is a known hacker. He even used to tell his victims that. However, he used to scare them further by saying that he knew how to remain anonymous by covering his tracks but the FBI were able to track him down, falsifying his claims.