Eddie Joe Oglesby, Jr.
A 52-year-old Florida man faces the prospect of spending decades behind bars after being convicted of producing and receiving child sexual abuse material by posing as a federal agent and coercing young girls to send explicit photos and videos in threatening Google Hangouts chats.
Eddie Joe Oglesby, Jr., a.k.a. Gabriel Ethan Collins and Shadow, was convicted by a federal jury in the Middle District of Florida, prosecutors announced on Monday.
“According to testimony and evidence presented at trial, Oglesby created an elaborate false identity that he used to impersonate a federal agent,” prosecutors said in a press release summarizing the defendant’s crimes. “He used this false identity to coerce underaged female victims to produce and send him sexually explicit images over the internet. Posing as the false agent, Oglesby threatened to have the victims arrested, imprisoned, institutionalized, or killed if they did not comply with his demands.”
DOJ noted that Oglesby was found on Sept. 27, 2021 by federal agents at his home with a minor female runaway, identified as victim 2 in this story.
“A search of Oglesby’s cellphone showed him logged into multiple social media applications under both his real and false identity,” DOJ said. “Agents ultimately found 473 pages of electronic communications between Oglesby and one of his victims on that cellphone.”
The complaint against Oglesby was much more disturbing in detail on the lengths he went to manipulate three victims into sending him child sexual abuse material (CSAM) via chats (some of them audio; he never showed his face) on Google Hangouts in early 2021.
During those conversations, the feds said, Oglesby would go by the name Gabriel Collins and sometimes would refer to an individual he called Shadow.
The first victim, described as a minor, was from Georgia. Her stepfather was the one who found evidence of Oglesby’s crimes on a laptop the girl was using.
“Victim l’s stepfather then reviewed the laptop and discovered that Victim 1 had been sending sexually explicit photographs and having conversations that were sexual in nature with an adult male on Google Hangouts,” the complaint said.
The victim said the person she knew by the name Gabriel Collins never showed his face, but they did chat by message and voice.
“While speaking on Google Hangouts, Collins would call Victim 1 his fiance even though he knew she was underaged. Victim 1 also advised that Collins demanded that she promise to have sex with him and his friends. Victim 1 then spoke about Collins telling her to lay on her stomach naked and masturbate for him,” the complaint said. “Collins threatened Victim 1 by saying he would send her to a mental ward or turn her in and ban her from the internet.”
“Victim 1 advised that Collins also wanted her to have sexual intercourse with her stepfather,” documents continued, before repeating two threatening messages the defendant sent the victim: “You have until 3am to fuck him. If you have not fucked him by then. I will have you committed”; “Guess you better say good bye to mommy, she won’t like what she finds out and when she a federal court order to have you placed in a mental institution, she can’t help you.”
The second victim said the individual she knew by the name Gabriel Collins first began grooming her online when she was 15. Oglesby claimed to be a federal agent.
“Victim 2 advised she did 6 speak with Collins both on the phone and through video chats. Victim 2 advised that during the video chats Collins would ask her to show her breasts and vagina and ask her to masturbate on camera for him,” documents said. “Collins also asked her to masturbate using a cucumber, but Victim 2 never did.”
The complaint said that once the victim turned 18, Gabriel Collins persuaded her to leave North Carolina to stay with Oglesby in Florida. Little did she know that the two were the same man. She went so far as to purchase a bus ticket, but she went home when the bus did not arrive.
Oglesby responded by going to North Carolina and taking the victim to Florida, where she moved in with him. After that happened, the “Gabriel Collins” persona told the victim in an extended message that “Shadow is a good man” and the right one for her.
But authorities said the second victim noticed something key: Gabriel Collins and Eddie Oglesby’s voices sounded the same.
The feds learned the third victim was 15 years old at the time they got into contact with a detective from the Weatherford Police Department in Texas about December 2020 solicitation case. Oglesby had pretended to be Gabriel Collins and an undercover government agent on Google Hangouts.
“The parents reported that they had confronted Victim 3 with the fact that Collins was a 51-year-old man from Central Florida, but that Victim 3 did not believe them and told them that Collins was an undercover government agent,” documents said. “The parents reported to WPD that the Google Hangout account Collins used was the Hangouts Account. Finally, the parents reported that Victim 3 was still communicating with Collins despite their efforts to stop her and was sending pornographic pictures and videos of herself to him at his request.”
The complaint detailed a litany of explicit chats.
“get a cucumber,” the defendant said.
“I can’t. My parents wont buy anymore,” the victim replied.
“Let’s fuck,” said another message from the defendant.
“I can’t right now. My parents are up fighting. Sigh …..” the victim replied.
In a subsequent chat, the victim said she “Got cucumbers” and sent the defendant a photo. Days later, she asked for Oglesby’s permission to “hookup” with a 19-year-old man she met on Omegle.
The feds said that the victim sent the defendant images — “eight are consistent with child erotica and eleven are consistent with child pornography.”
The complaint described the content of those images with specificity.
When Oglesby was confronted by federal agents, he waived his Miranda rights, denied everything, and told them he had no idea what Google Hangouts was, authorities said.
The complaint said that an ensuing search of Oglesby’s home showed that he had “handwritten notes […] containing Google Hangouts account information as well as login information for another Instagram account.” The feds said they also found evidence that Oglesby had a Snapchat account under the name “Gabriel Collins.”
The Fort McCoy, Florida, resident faces at least 15 years in prison but up to 30 years for each of the CSAM production crimes he was found guilty of committing. Prosecutors said Oglesby also faces at least five years and up to 20 years behind bars for receiving CSAM.
Federal court records show Oglesby’s sentencing is set for Feb. 16, 2023.
The defendant remains in Marion County lockup on a federal hold, jail records show.
[Image via Marion County Sheriff’s Office]
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