An arrest warrant was issued in Olmsted County Court, Minnesota, on March 13, 2026, for Devin Luke Romero (18, Louisiana), charged with one count of use of minors in pornographic work, one count of possession of child pornography, and two counts of soliciting a child to engage in a sexual act after he allegedly targeted a Rochester girl under the age of nine via Snapchat. Rochester police learned of the case on January 23, 2026; Romero initiated contact on January 22, asked for the victim's age (she said 17, then 14, though she was under nine), demanded sexually explicit photos, and when she refused, threatened to leak her address and send the photos and her username to others unless she sent him explicit photos daily. Investigators linked the Snapchat account to Romero and discovered he had also been chatting with at least three other people who claimed to be girls under 16, demanding sexually explicit photos from them as well.
This is sextortion at its most predatory: a child under nine, a stranger on Snapchat, a threat cycle initiated within 24 hours. Guardii's anti-sextortion detection module, operating in real time across Snapchat, Instagram, Discord, Roblox, and other messaging platforms, is purpose-built to intercept precisely this pattern—flagging the demand for images, the escalating threats, the coercive language—before the first photo is sent or the first threat is carried out. Backed by Startmate and operating as a Meta Business Partner, Guardii monitors direct messages for threat patterns rather than reading every word, surfacing the child in acute distress to parents or safeguarding professionals and enabling rapid escalation to law enforcement while the predator is still in contact, converting the warrant issued weeks later into an intervention delivered in real time.
