California man pleads guilty to cyberstalking, including three victims in the Western District of New York

BUFFALO, N.Y.-U.S. Attorney Michael DiGiacomo announced today that Max Yang Chen, 31, of San Jose, CA, pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge John L. Sinatra, Jr. to cyberstalking and aggravated identity theft, which carry a maximum penalty of seven years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

According to the plea agreement, between March 2021 and June 18, 2023, Chen was able to compromise and gain unauthorized access to the social media accounts of hundreds of young women, including three victims in the Western District of New York. After gaining access to the victims' social media accounts, Chen would search the accounts for sexually explicit photographs of the victims, which he would then download. After obtaining sexually explicit images or videos of a victim, Chen would:

• send the sexually explicit photographs to the victim herself to show the victim that he had access to their account;
• post them on the victim's social media profile so that they were publicly available;
• send sexually demeaning or violent messages to the victim; and/or
• extort the victim to send him additional sexually explicit images, for example, by saying that he would remove the images from the internet, but only if the victim sent the defendant additional sexually explicit images.

Chen gained unauthorized access to at least 200 social media accounts belonging to victims both in the Western District of New York and elsewhere. Chen also directly contacted over 200 young women whose sexually explicit images he had obtained, typically sending them sexually demeaning or violent messages. For more than 50 young women, he sent them sexually explicit images of themselves. In total, Chen obtained and possessed hundreds of thousands of explicit images and videos of more than six thousand young women that had been obtained through the compromise of their social media accounts or in some other authorized manner.

In addition to the charges in the Western District of New York, Chen is charged with attempted production of child pornography in the Central District of California. Those charges remain pending.

The plea is the result of an investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, under the direction of Special Agent-in-Charge Allen D. Davis, II.

Sentencing will be scheduled at a later date.

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