Indictment: Cumberlands student tried to blackmail woman with sex video
A southern Kentucky college student tried to force a young woman to send him a sexually graphic video of herself after he stole log-in information from several computers, a federal grand jury has charged.
Sungkook Kim, 23, was indicted Thursday on 15 counts of sending threatening e-mails to the woman in October and November.
The grand jury also charged Kim with illegally accessing other people's e-mail accounts, possessing identification belonging to others, and possessing child pornography.
Kim, who is from South Korea, was a student at the University of the Cumberlands when he allegedly tried to extort the video from a female student. The university expelled him, according to a court document.
Kim was arrested in November. Earlier this month, U.S. Magistrate Judge Robert Wier ordered him held without bond.
Kim told authorities that he was in the university science lab more than a year ago when he noticed someone had failed to log off a computer, according to a sworn statement from Donnie D. Kidd, an FBI agent.
Kim said he looked on the computer said found an e-mail with an attached video clip of a young woman having sex, and saved it to a thumb drive, Kidd said.
Kidd said Kim also admitted placing software on several university computers that captured data on keystrokes, allowing him to get other people's log-in and password information.
On Oct. 1, a female student told police in Williamsburg that someone was trying to force her to make a video of herself masturbating and send it to him, Kidd said.
The student had gotten an e-mail that said the sender had four Web cam clips of her having sex with a young man, and that if she didn't make a video for him, he would send the clips to her friends and professors, according to Kidd's statement.
The young woman told police she had made the videos with her boyfriend when she was 17.
Wayne Bird, then a detective in Williamsburg, sought assistance from the cyber-crimes unit of the state Attorney General's Office, which tracked the e-mail to Kim, Kidd said.
Kim told Bird he contacted the female student to teach her a lesson, and didn't really plan to send the compromising material to anyone.
However, Wier, the magistrate judge, said Kim's messages to the woman were "insistent, repeated and extremely threatening."
"The court fearfully wonders where the threats would ultimately have led, if the victim had not alerted authorities," Wier wrote in his order to detain Kim.
When police searched Kim's computer at his home in Williamsburg, they found a file showing girls younger than 12 being raped by adult men, Kidd said in his affidavit.
Kim denied possessing child pornography, but told Kidd he is addicted to porn, Wier said in his order.
This story was originally published December 19, 2008 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Indictment: Cumberlands student tried to blackmail woman with sex video."