A Westerville man pleaded guilty Thursday in federal court in Columbus to crimes involving the sextortion and exploitation of minors he met on social media platforms, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Ohio.
Christian Davidson, 27, of Westerville, pleaded guilty on October 22 to two counts of transmitting interstate communications with the intent to extort, two counts of sexual exploitation of a minor and one count of possession of child pornography, federal prosecutors said in a news release announcing the plea.
The FBI began investigating Davidson after receiving information from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and other law enforcement agencies, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office. The case was prosecuted in U.S. District Court in Columbus.
Prosecutors allege that in 2024 and 2025, Davidson targeted minor victims in a sextortion scheme, threatening to distribute sexually explicit images of them and to cause physical harm to their family members if they did not comply. Authorities also said Davidson posted some of the explicit material online.
In one incident described by prosecutors, in August 2024 Davidson contacted a minor victim on TikTok and threatened to expose information about her unless she participated in a video call, during which he took explicit pictures of the victim. Prosecutors said that when she refused further demands, he created a TikTok account using the victim’s name and images.
Federal officials said the investigation also examined an earlier case in which Davidson tried to extort another victim for sexual content in 2018 and 2019, creating new accounts to continue harassing her after she blocked him, according to the news release.
The Southern District of Ohio covers Columbus and much of central and southern Ohio, and cases investigated by the FBI with information from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children are prosecuted there by the U.S. Attorney’s Office. In this case, prosecutors said information from the center and other law enforcement agencies is what brought Davidson to investigators’ attention in the first place.
The guilty plea was announced Thursday by the U.S. Attorney’s Office. Sentencing in the case will be handled by the federal court in Columbus, and prosecutors have not announced a sentencing date in the release cited Thursday.