On Friday, at the federal courthouse in Central Islip, Carmine Simpson was sentenced by United States District Judge Gary R. Brown to 23 years in prison for sexually exploiting minors online.
On March 24, 2023, the defendant pleaded guilty to one count of sexually exploiting a minor.
The charges stem from Simpson’s extensive online conduct in 2020, while he was a New York City Police Department (NYPD) officer, which includes engaging numerous children in sexual conversations, enticing and manipulating them into sending him nude images and videos, routinely requesting them to engage in live chat sessions on FaceTime and Snapchat, directing them to physically harm themselves, and asking them to write degrading sexual phrases on their nude bodies.
Simpson resigned from the NYPD in 2022.
Joseph Nocella, Jr., United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, and Christopher G. Raia, Assistant Director in Charge, Federal Bureau of Investigation, New York Field Office (FBI), announced the sentence.
“The defendant’s repeated sexual solicitation and exploitation of minors is reprehensible,” stated United States Attorney Nocella. “That he was a law enforcement officer at the time he committed these crimes makes his conduct even more horrific. My Office will continue to work to protect vulnerable children from predators like the defendant.”
Simpson, then a police officer with the NYPD, targeted vulnerable children on Twitter for the purpose of having them create and send him sexually exploitative photos and videos of themselves.
Simpson had multiple Twitter profiles and pretended to be a 17-year-old boy to entice minors into engaging with him, even using a filter to alter his own appearance so that he looked younger. Simpson then communicated with numerous minors, including some as young as 13 years old.
Law enforcement first learned about the defendant’s conduct in December 2020, after the mother of John Doe 2, a 13-year-old transgender male, filed a police report after finding chat communications with the defendant on her child’s computer.
In those messages, the defendant stated, “Do you take good nudes?” and “You take good nudes? Prove it.”
He gave instructions to write words on the victim’s body with a marker and commented, “How many words do you think we can add to your body?” As part of that conversation, John Doe 2 sent the defendant at least two sexually explicit videos.
