CLEARCREEK TOWNSHIP — A Warren County man pleaded guilty to cyberstalking, seven years after FBI agents arrested him for giving ultimatums to underage girls online to be his sex slave or be killed.
Nicholas Edward Kurtz, who was 21 at the time, was living with his parents in Clearcreek Township when a tip from a 14-year-old girl in Wisconsin led law enforcement to him. Kurtz was arrested in September 2015, and he has been in the Butler County jail ever since.
But Kurtz may not be behind bars for much longer.
“I’ll get out in three months,” a shackled Kurtz whispered to supporters who sat behind him in U.S. District Court on Monday.
Kurtz signed a binding plea deal with federal prosecutors which guarantees him a time-served sentence, meaning he will be released from jail after his sentencing hearing in a few months. Afterward, he’ll be on supervised release for five years and get sex offender treatment, but he will not be required to register as a sex offender.
But U.S. District Court Judge Timothy Black declined to accept the plea at Monday’s hearing, saying he needs more time to learn about Kurtz. Black said he would make his final decision once a pre-sentence investigation report is done.
“I can’t make that decision today,” Black said. “When you come back for sentencing, I have to determine whether the proposed sentence of time served is sufficient.”
The judge also refused to allow Kurtz out of jail on bond to live near his parents' home in Lebanon.
If Black rejects the plea deal, Kurtz would be allowed to withdraw his guilty plea. Kurtz could decide to take his case to a jury. The maximum sentence for cyberstalking is life in prison.
The U.S. Attorney’s office did not respond to a request for comment on the plea deal.
“I was somewhat surprised at the leniency of the charges against him given the fact that there seem to be so many cases of abuse that they suspected and that some of them involve such egregious kind of threats,” said David Finkelhor, director of the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire, who has monitored crimes against children for 25 years, and particularly crimes involving technology.
A federal grand jury indicted Kurtz in October 2015 on two counts of coercion and enticement, which are considered registerable offenses under the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act. But that indictment was dismissed on Monday when Kurtz pleaded guilty to the cyberstalking charge, which is not a registerable offense under the law.
“It wasn’t really clear to me why the prosecution settled the case that way,” Finkelhor said. “It’s particularly surprising because federal prosecutions tend to have more serious penalties.”
Kurtz’s attorneys have filed motions arguing that his right to a speedy trial was violated, but the judge declined to dismiss the case. His attorneys have also questioned the search of Kurtz’s parents’ home and other evidentiary issues.
“When prosecutions take this long, it’s really hard on the victims,” Finkelhor said. “The longer a case goes on, the harder it is for victims to recover.”
After Kurtz was arrested, Clearcreek Township police told the media at the time that there may be dozens more victims, according to multiple reports.
The FBI began investigating Kurtz in November 2014 with officers from Wisconsin after a 14-year-old girl said Kurtz threatened to rape and kill her if she didn’t do as he demanded, including mutilating herself and acting as his slave, according to an FBI affidavit from September 2015.
The girl said she met Kurtz, who was using the name Chase Rein, on the social media site Ask.fm in October 2014 when she was 13. He pretended to be a 17-year-old who lived in a foster community, and they developed a friendship through the Kik messenger application, Skype, text and video messages, according to the affidavit.
“Kurtz then told (her) that she had to call him ‘master’ and follow his demands to mutilate herself and send him nude pictures. Kurtz sent (her) a list of 100 rules of a slave and videos of how slaves act, and he told her to memorize the rules,” according to the affidavit.
The victim eventually ended her communication with Kurtz in November 2014 after confiding in and seeking help from a friend and school counselor. But a few months later Kurtz contacted her on Instagram and told he would kill her and her family if she did not communicate with him again, according to the FBI affidavit.
In one message exchange she wrote, “you don’t know where i live you cant hurt me..or the other people.”
Kurtz responded, “Yes. I actually do … Ok..I will be there in 2 weeks … I have to get guns first,” according to the affidavit.
The investigation led the FBI to other situations between Kurtz and girls between the ages of 12 and 16 in Virginia, Maryland, Michigan and New York, where he allegedly used threats and humiliation to coerce them into sending nude photos and sexually explicit videos online between 2013 and 2015.
“Talk to me. Or I will post your vid online,” Kurtz allegedly wrote to a 16-year-old girl in New York, in which he threatened to kill himself if she ignored him. “You are to message me right after your tutoring. If you don’t, I will take your parents with me,” according to the FBI affidavit.
Richard Ruggieri, assistant special agent in charge of the FBI’s Cincinnati office, declined to discuss Kurtz’s case. But he urged parents to talk to their children about online predators.
“The biggest thing in my opinion is be engaged with your kid, right? Know what’s going on. Know who their friends are,” Ruggieri said. “Being engaged and having a conversation with your child is in my opinion the first step.”
Parents should know what social media platforms their children are using. They should explain the difference between appropriate online behavior and red-flag conversations. And urge children to use electronic devices in public spaces, like the living room, so parents can monitor what’s going on, he said.
“I would suggest parents maybe share some of the stories from the public forum that are on the internet or the local police websites about the hazards of these things,” Ruggieri said.
The more sophisticated predators online start by being friendly to children, Finkelhor said.
“They look for vulnerabilities like kids who are lonely, kids who don’t have a lot of friends, kids who are having conflicts with their parents, and then they give them support and show concern … then they turn the conversation to more sexual things,” Finkelhor said.
“Sometimes you have offenders … they trick kids into providing images or say that they have information about them or know their location and begin to threaten them to provide images,” Finkelhor said. “Kids can be quite scared and intimidated by that and think they have no choice but to comply."
If children do send photos or videos to a predator online, they could be extorted for money or to continue the relationship. Often predators will threaten to post the photos and videos online for friends and family to see.
“We’ve had cases, maybe not here in Cincinnati … where a young adult has sent a picture or a video. They’ve received extortion requirements, whatever they might be … and the victim on the sending end can’t handle it anymore and they commit suicide,” Ruggieri said. “It’s a horrible outcome, absolutely horrible outcome, and part of what we’re trying to talk with you about is - it doesn’t need to be that way.”
If parents are worried, Ruggieri encourages them to talk to their children and if need be, check their devices themselves or contact law enforcement.
These types of crime are a high priority for the FBI, Ruggieri said, “I’m in charge of all of our criminal programs here in Cincinnati and it's one of the busiest that I have in my branch.”
Finkelhor suggested that Kurtz’s alleged behavior is on the “extreme end of the spectrum.”
“I would imagine that somebody who has engaged in that kind of threatening behavior and has the suspicion of having so many victims … is somebody you would want to have on a sex offender registry,” said Finkelhor.
