AUSTIN, Texas — Tre Von Lamount Harris, a 21-year-old Austin man, will serve 292 months in federal prison, a little more than 24 years, for a scheme in which he pretended to be a teenage girl online to get boys to send him sexual images and then demanded money from them, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Western District of Texas said.
Federal prosecutors said Harris started the scheme at age 16. Using the fake identity Michelle across several social media apps, and Cash App for payments, he told the boys what images he wanted, then threatened to post the material online or send it to their friends and family unless they paid.
Prosecutors said he carried out some of those threats.
His first arrest came in 2022, when the Travis County Sheriff’s Office booked him on a pair of sexual assault counts plus a charge over threats to release intimate recordings, all tied to a second fake name, Karla. He was let out on bond and kept going to high school.
Starting in December 2022, tips about accounts linked to Harris reached the nonprofit National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, sent by social media companies and by members of the public. The FBI picked up those reports in May 2023 and opened an investigation that involved several victims.
Federal agents arrested Harris at his high school on May 21, 2024. The FBI investigated the federal case, and the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Western District of Texas prosecuted it. U.S. Attorney Simmons said Harris kept exploiting teenage boys for money even after his first arrest.
Harris was a minor when the scheme began and was still a high school student when federal agents finally arrested him, more than two years after his first arrest.
Filed under: Austin TX Crime News