He has remained in U.S. custody since December 3, 2025, after being temporarily surrendered by Canadian authorities.
A 40-year-old Canadian national identified as Ramanan Pathmanathan, has pleaded guilty in the United States to sexually exploiting more than 100 children across the country through an elaborate online scheme, the U.S. Department of Justice announced on Friday.
Pathmanathan of Toronto, Canada, was said to have entered a guilty plea at the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, admitting to charges of production of child pornography and coercion and enticement of a minor.
He has remained in U.S. custody since December 3, 2025, after being temporarily surrendered by Canadian authorities.
The Justice Department said that court records showed that Pathmanathan admitted that for more than seven years, up until the day of his arrest in Canada, he targeted and sexually exploited over 100 minor girls in the United States.
The victims, aged between 11 and 17, were located across multiple states.
Prosecutors said Pathmanathan created a fabricated online persona, posing as an American teenage boy on popular social media platforms.
While communicating with the minors via video chats, he persuaded and coerced them into engaging in sexually explicit acts.
Without the victims’ knowledge or consent, he secretly screen-recorded the videos and stored them.
When some of the children refused to continue participating in the abuse, Pathmanathan escalated his actions by threatening to distribute the recorded videos to the victims’ families and friends, authorities said.
“Today’s guilty plea marks a critical step toward justice for over 100 targeted victims in the United States who this predator harmed with his diabolical actions,” said Assistant Attorney General A. Tysen Duva of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division.
Duva added that Pathmanathan used “manipulation, threats, and fear to coerce unsuspecting juveniles into producing and engaging in sexually explicit acts, robbing them of their innocence.”
Pathmanathan is said to have previously pleaded guilty to similar offenses in Canada on October 27, 2022, and was sentenced to 12 years in prison under Canadian law.
In the U.S. case, he faces a maximum sentence of life imprisonment, with a mandatory minimum of 25 years, as well as fines and a period of supervised release.
He will also be required to pay restitution of no less than $3,000 per victim.
His sentencing has been scheduled for May 27, 2026.
The investigation was led by the FBI’s Houston Field Office, with assistance from the Toronto Police Service.
The Justice Department’s Office of International Affairs secured Pathmanathan’s temporary surrender from Canada.
The prosecution is being handled by Trial Attorney Kaylynn Foulon of the Justice Department’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section and Assistant U.S. Attorney Karen Shinskie for the District of Columbia.
U.S. officials said the case was brought under Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative launched in 2006 to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse.