Source: U.S. Department of Justice

James Strahler II, 37, of Columbus, was sentenced in U.S. District Court on September 8, 2026, to 180 months in prison for cybercrimes that involved both real and AI-generated sexually explicit images and threats to numerous victims. He pleaded guilty in April to cyberstalking, producing obscene visual representations of child sexual abuse, and publication of digital forgeries under the Take It Down Act, and prosecutors said he had installed more than 24 AI platforms and over 100 AI web-based models on his phone to produce synthetic material. The Department of Justice described a campaign of harassment using telephone calls, voicemails, text messages, and web postings between December 2024 and June 2025.

According to the release, Strahler created AI-generated pornographic videos and images by morphing victims’ faces and the faces of minor boys from his community onto other bodies, including depictions alleging sexual acts with relatives, and posted over 700 images to a website dedicated to child sexual abuse; an additional 2,400 files on his phone were flagged for nudity, morphed child sexual abuse material, or violence. His conduct—reported initially to the Hilliard Police Department and the Delaware County Sheriff’s Office and later referred to the FBI—led to his June 2025 arrest. Officials, including the U.S. Attorney, the FBI Cincinnati Special Agent in Charge, local police, the Maryland AI and Synthetic Media Threats Task Force, and Chief Judge Sarah D. Morrison, announced the sentence and noted this was the first national conviction under the 2025 Take It Down Act; Assistant U.S. Attorney Emily Czerniejewski represented the United States and the case is part of Project Safe Childhood.