A 36-year-old man indicted last fall for posting nude videos of a New Canaan girl on a popular video-sharing service pleaded guilty Monday to distribution of child pornography, according to the U.S. Department of Justice .
Brian Grinnell of Lakewood, Ohio, faces five to 20 years in prison and will be sentenced in July, according to a press release from the Connecticut District of the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
In March 2020, he posed as a 15-year-old girl and met the girl, who was under age 12 at the time, on Omegle, according to court documents cited in the release.
“Shortly thereafter, he began communicating with the minor victim on Snapchat,” it said. “Grinnell told the minor victim to take sexually explicit photos and videos of herself and send them to Grinnell over Snapchat. After the minor victim began to feel threatened by Grinnell, she unfriended and blocked Grinnell’s account.”
Grinnell then threatened to post a video of the minor victim naked on TikTok, he told a friend of the girl’s through the app, unless she got in touch with him.
When that friend (also a minor) begged him not to, Grinnell said, “I want a video of you begging me to not put them up. And you have to be topless in the video. If you don’t want any more of your friend stuff going out,” according to the documents.
When the friend said she would contact authorities, he responded, “How are they gonna find me?” Grinnell then posted another video of the minor victim on TikTok, the documents said.
The New Canaan Police Department participated in a joint investigation with the FBI.