ORANGE CITY, Fla. — Justin Testani’s first victim — a 13-year-old Alabama girl — left a desperate voicemail: “Help me, mama, I really need you now — please!”

  • Orange City resident gets 6 decades in federal prison
  • Justin Testani pleaded guilty to 2 child-porn charges
  • He posed as a teen girl to befriend girls ages 10 to 13

Testani, 30, of Orange City was sentenced Thursday to 60 years in federal prison for online sexual exploitation of that girl and others across the country from December 2017 to January 2019.

Described by federal prosecutors as a master “sextortionist,” Testani posed online as a teen lingerie model, befriending girls between 10 and 13 on Instagram and Snapchat and persuading them to send him revealing photographs of themselves. 

Testani then threatened to share those images if the girls didn’t provide sexually graphic photos and videos of themselves. 

“At other times, Testani threatened to kidnap, rape, and/or kill the victims and their family members,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Florida said in a statement Thursday.

“He issued these threats to coerce victims into creating and sending him more images and videos of themselves engaged in sexually explicit conduct,” the agency noted.

Testani pleaded guilty to two charges of production and attempted production of child pornography on February 6.

U.S. District Judge Carlos E. Mendoza on Thursday sentenced Testani to the maximum possible sentence, as federal prosecutors requested, essentially life behind bars. 

Mendoza also ordered Testani to pay $19,670 in restitution.

Federal prosecutors said Testani tried to trap hundreds of young girls online as part of a growing trend known as “sextortion.”

“The FBI is seeing an alarming increase in cases that involve adults coercing children into producing sexual images and videos online, a crime called sextortion,” the agency says online. “These predators have developed tactics that allow them to exploit children through their connected devices within their own homes.”

One sextortionist, Richard L. Finkbiner of Indiana, amassed 22,000 video files from webcam feeds, mostly sexually explicit content from young people nationwide, when he was arrested in 2012. He was sentenced to 40 years.

Prosecutors called Testani a “master of such traps.”

While posing online as teen girl who modeled for a prominent teen lingerie brand, Testani targeted social media spaces where young girls congregate.

“Then he convinced them to send photographs of themselves — sometimes by dangling the prospect of a modeling deal, sometimes through sheer flattery,” prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memorandum.

After getting those images, Testani turned on his victims. But the relationships were friendly at first.

He told the 13-year-old Alabama girl that she was “cute and pretty,” and they chatted online for days. At one point, though, Testani threatened to spread rumors about the victim’s sexuality and widely distribute images she shared with him.

He demanded she take a nude photograph of herself and send it to him “or else.” He tricked her into believing he knew where she lived and then threatened to kidnap and rape the girl and her best friend and kill them and their family members.

She sent the nude photo.

He made her switch to a video-chat function and forced her to perform sexual acts so he could watch.

Prosecutors said Testani took control of her Snapchat account to trap her friends to send him nude photos, She regained control of the account, called her mother, and alerted police.

In another case, he used the Instagram account of a New York girl, then 11, in January 2018, to fabricate a Snapchat account, creating “a fake online persona of an attractive young girl.”

"Then, under that persona, the defendant reached out to more than 330 Instagram users — most of whom were young girls — during a two-day period in March 2018,” prosecutors wrote. “He portrayed himself as a young recruiter for Victoria’s Secret Pink, a lingerie brand whose target market is female youth.”

He flirted with girls who responded and offered them cash and modeling deals while asking them to send pictures of themselves.

“These exchanges,” prosecutors wrote, “shed light on how the defendant approached his victims in order to gain their initial trust — and photographs.”