5 hours ago

NEW YORK (1010 WINS) — A Staten Island sex offender posed as a teenage boy to get a 16-year-old girl to send him pornographic videos and photos of herself via Instagram, prosecutors said Wednesday.

Ryan Behar, 42 was charged with attempted sexual exploitation of a child on Wednesday, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York said in a press release.

Behar started messaging the teenage girl on Instagram on Sept. 13 of last year, prosecutors said.

During their conversations, the 42-year-old — who was pretending to be a 16-year-old boy — “repeatedly” asked the girl to make and send him “pornographic videos, photographs and live visual depictions,” the attorney’s office said.

Behar also sent the girl sexually explicit photos he claimed he had taken of himself and told the girl to perform “sexual acts” on video calls, according to prosecutors. Their communications lasted through October, prosecutors said.

“As alleged, Behar misused social media in an effort to lure an underage teenager into having sexually explicit communications with him,” acting U.S. Attorney Seth DuCharme said in a statement.

“This office will continue to make every effort to protect minors and hold to account those who contribute to their victimization,” he added.

Behar has “a long history of criminal misconduct involving minors,” prosecutors noted in a detention memo, including a February 2018 conviction “for an offense involving a 12-year-old victim.”

His attorney information wasn’t immediately available Wednesday.