From the bedroom of his childhood home near Newry, McCartney lured in young victims across 30 countries
A Northern Ireland man at the centre of a global web of catfishing, blackmail and sexual abuse is believed by police to have targeted about 3,500 children.
Tragically, his offending led to the death of a 12-year-old girl in the US, Cimarron Thomas, who took her own life in May 2018 while in direct contact with McCartney, who was attempting to blackmail her into making her younger sister commit sex acts via a webcam. A prosecuting barrister told a pre-sentence hearing: “As time went on there was an escalation in the seriousness of his conduct in the form of the depravity of the demands he made of the subject children.”
One source with knowledge of the investigation said his offending was “quite frankly, relentless”. He began offending as a teenager, using multiple devices and operating across different time zones. The source said he built a “paedophile enterprise”. The message would typically say: “alright i used a fake camera snap app. i have your face pic and nudes. You are gonna do as i say for tonight and then ill leave after. But if you dont them im upoading everything online for everyone to see. understand?”
In several of the videos seized by police, victims are seen pleading with McCartney to stop. One little girl repeatedly said she would kill herself and her mum was dying from cancer. He replied: “I do not give a shit about you or your mum.” In the early days of the investigation, much effort went into trying to identify the thousands of unknown victims whose images were on McCartney’s devices. When he appeared in court to face sample charges, prosecutors had to use the online ciphers of multiple victims who had not been traced.
Detectives discovered McCartney had abused the girl some days earlier. She then returned to school believing her ordeal was over. But McCartney contacted her again, demanding she include her sister in the abuse. At one point, US authorities wanted to extradite McCartney, but this was not possible because he was already facing charges relating to the same crimes in Northern Ireland.
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