Jeffrey Cummings Of Baltimore To Serve 30 Years For Coercing Minors To Engage In Sex Acts
BALTIMORE (WJZ) -- A Baltimore man will serve 30 years in federal prison, followed by a lifetime of supervised release, for pleading guilty to enticing minors to engage in sexual activity during the time he was required to register as a sex offender, according to a statement Friday from the Maryland District of the U.S. Attorney's Office.
Jeffrey Cummings, 36, tried to coerce dozens of minor victims to engage in sexually explicit conduct on social media between March 2017 and July 2019 and communicated with at least six, according to the statement. He was required to register as a sex offender for his 2008 conviction in Anne Arundel County for sexual contact with a 10-year-old boy, according to the statement.
Authorities began investigating Cummings after the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children received a CyberTip from a guardian of two boys. The boys' aunt told investigators someone contacted her nephews and asked them to mail dirty socks.
During the same time period, Cummings had several social media accounts under several names and using false female personas to pretend he was a young girl communicating with the boys, who were between 13 and 16, according to the statement. Cummings asked them to send pictures and videos of themselves in explicit sexual conduct and told authorities he distributed some of the photos he received.
Cummings, posing as a teenage girl, also sends explicit pictures of a teen girl to at least five of the boys, according to the statement.
He later told authorities he told some of the victims the dirty socks were for a science project and offered $20 for one pair.
If the boys declined to comply with Cummings' demands, he threatened to post their names and addresses and distribute their videos to their teachers and school or post them on social media. He proceeded to do so at least once, according to the statement.
When authorities executed a search warrant on July 19, 2019, they seized his cell phone that contained images of child pornography, including of the victims, the aliases for the fake social media accounts. Cummings told police the demand for the dirty socks stemmed from a fetish.
