A Twin Cities man has received a 30-year prison term for coercing teenage girls into send him sexually explicit photos and videos over social media, then extorting them.
Timothy Lennard Gebhart, 38, of Woodbury was sentenced Wednesday in U.S. District Court in St. Paul after pleading guilty to production and attempted production of child pornography, distribution of child pornography, and interstate communications with intent to extort.
While imposing the sentence, which includes 10 years’ supervised release, Judge Jerry Blackwell called Gebhart’s actions a “deliberate, persistent sextortion scheme” that ran from July 2021 until September 2023.
Federal advisory sentencing guidelines called for Gebhart to receive an 82-year sentence. Gebhart’s attorney asked the court ahead of sentencing for his client to receive the mandatory minimum of 15 years. However, federal judges have full discretion when sentencing defendants and are not bound by the guidelines calculation.
According to the indictment, Gebhart used Instagram and Snapchat to contact a 14-year-old girl and a 16-year-old girl. They sent him photos, some of which he paid for. He then used their contacts on the social platforms to find other minors to exploit in Minnesota, Indiana, Texas and other states.
Over the course of his crimes, he used more than five dozen aliases and portrayed himself “as someone younger, including posing as a teenager,” the plea agreement read.
At various times, Gebhart pressured his victims to send him additional sexually explicit material, threatening to send the images he already had to family, friends and classmates if they refused, the indictment spelled out. In one message to a victim, he wrote: “you’re gonna do what I ask you to do or guess who I’ll be messaging.”
Gebhart also sent his victims “graphic and explicit videos of suicides and violent murders to coerce and intimidate the minor victims,” the indictment read.
