By DAMIEN FISHER, InDepthNH.org
It was a grimly commonplace press release April 24 from the United States Attorney’s Office in Concord. A Harrisville man pleaded guilty to possession of child sex abuse images.
In 2025, the internet-fueled sexual exploitation of children is so prevalent that convictions like Ryan Vallee’s become little more than short news stories, read and hopefully forgotten quickly. But Vallee, 31, was famous. At least, on the Internet.
In 2016, Vallee pleaded guilty to a 31-count indictment that he hacked the social media, online shopping, and email accounts of at least 23 teen girls and young women, cyberstalked them, and blackmailed them into sending him nude photos of themselves. Multiple victims were Vallee’s Belmont High School classmates at the time he was targeting them, and many of the victims personally knew Vallee in their small community.
“It definitely changed the way I go about my life and my day-to-day life,” one victim said during Vallee’s 2017 sentencing hearing, according to WMUR. “He knows where I live now, so that’s kind of scary. I have social anxiety, and I don’t sleep very well at night.”
Vallee, who tried the defense that his autism mitigated his crimes, was sentenced to 96 months in federal prison. He was released in 2022 and faded into obscurity. Mostly. In June of that year, Netflix released the true-crime documentary series, Web of Make Believe: Death, Lies and the Internet.
The documentary series featured a different Internet-based crime in each episode, and Vallee’s sextortion scheme was featured in the fourth episode.
Vallee would obtain sexually explicit photos of the girls after hacking into their private accounts. He would then blackmail them into sending more nude photos by threatening to send the photos he had to everyone they knew online, including friends and family members. According to the show, Vallee continued cyberstalking and blackmailing at least one victim after he had been arrested in the case and was out on bail.
Secret Service Agent Michael Peak, who helped investigate Vallee, told the documentary crew once Vallee was behind bars, he worried about other cyber-predators.
“It was gratifying to know that Ryan Vallee was stopped, that these 23 victims had a level of justice, and had a level of closure. What scares me is that there are hundreds, if not thousands, more Ryan Vallee’s out there,” Peak said.
Vallee’s release from prison did not end the court-imposed supervision. Last year, probation officers searched his digital devices and found 175 images and 11 video files of child sexual abuse, according to the United States Attorney’s Office. None of the images or videos found in the search were connected to the 2016 case, according to the United States Attorney’s Office.
Vallee now faces up to 10 years in prison, or up to 20 if any of the victims are determined to have been under 12 when the new images and videos were created. Vallee has yet to be sentenced on the new conviction.