Zachariah Abraham Meyers, 18-year-old Pennsylvania high school student, faces over 300 charges after an investigation into an alleged sextortion scheme targeting dozens of underage victims. Meyers was arrested on Friday as authorities accused him of running a massive ‘catfishing’ and ‘sextortion’ scheme.
Police were reportedly alerted about the scheme in December and court documents identified 22 victims, as per NBC News. Meyers is a student of Peters Township High School in McMurray, and the news of his arrest has reportedly sent the quiet community in shock.
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Here’s five things to know about Zachariah Meyers.
Zachariah Meyers: 5 things to know
- Among the felony counts Meyers faces are trafficking in minors, sexual extortion, intercept communications, corruption of minors, child sexual abuse material, unlawful contact with a minor, sexual exploitation of children, and criminal use of communication facility, as per reports.
- As per the complaint, Meyers instructed juveniles to come up with and disseminate explicit photos and videos of themselves and also requested them to ‘engage in prohibited sexual acts’. He also reportedly demanded $500 from the victims in exchange for not sharing the material. As per reports, victims ranged from ages 14 to 17.
- Meyers is now being held without bail as he was deemed to be a flight risk and ‘danger to the community’. He’s reportedly in Washington County Prison.
- The accused allegedly hid his identity behind phony profiles of an Arizona man, an unidentified woman, and a female adult film star from the Netherlands, as per records.
- Meyers is believed to have used various social media platforms inlcuding Snapchat and TikTok to target his victims. “Zachariah Meyers established numerous fictitious TikTok accounts utilizing photographs and videos of uninvolved individuals. With these fictitious TikTok accounts, Zachariah Meyers was able to deceive the juvenile victims into believing he was these individuals, not himself. Having established these fictitious TikTok accounts, Zachariah Meyers was able to deceive and coerce juvenile males into sending explicit, pornographic images and videos of themselves,” the charging investigator reportedly wrote.
Meyers made good on his threats. The complaint reportedly alleged that when one of the victims refused to pay the five hundred dollars, his sister got an Instagram message with a naked photo of the boy. As per the complaint, Meyers coerced a 15-year-old to pose as an adult on ‘adult LGBTQ dating applications’ in order to ‘engage in specific sexual acts with adult men’. He allegedly instructed the teen to record said acts. He also stands accused of coercing a teen to record the high school wrestling team.
Meyers has a preliminary hearing scheduled on February 27.