An Ohio man is the first person to be convicted under the Trump administration’s Take It Down Act, a federal law criminalizing posting nonconsensual explicit imagery.
James Strahler II, 37, of Columbus, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court to cybercrimes, the U.S. Department of Justice announced.
The offenses included real and AI-generated sexually explicit images and threats of violence to numerous victims, the DOJ said.
Strahler had installed more than 24 AI platforms and more than 100 AI web-based models on his phone.
“He used telephone calls, voicemails, text messages and web postings in a campaign of harassment against his victims,” DOJ officials said.
Strahler pleaded guilty to cyberstalking, producing obscene visual representations of child sexual abuse and publication of digital forgeries.
His conviction of publication of digital forgeries is part of the Take It Down Act, a law enacted last year prohibiting non-consensual online publication of intimate visual depictions and AI forgeries.
From December 2024 until June 2025, Strahler sent harassing messages to at least six adult female victims. These messages included nude images of the victims, both real and AI-generated.
For example, Strahler used AI to create pornographic videos depicting at least one adult victim engaged in sex acts with her father. He then distributed those videos to the victim’s co-workers.
He also messaged the mothers of the adult females and demanded nude photos of them, threatening to circulate explicit or obscene images he created of their daughters if they did not comply.
Strahler also posted online AI-generated obscenities he created of children. He generated these files using the faces of minor boys from his community. He then morphed the face of the minor boys onto the bodies of other adults or children and created videos that depicted the boys engaged in sex acts.
He created AI-generated obscenity of the minor boys having sex with their mothers and/or grandmothers.
Ohio Perv First Convicted Under New Trump Law Criminalizing ‘Intimate Deepfakes’
By Ted Cohen
