Chicago area man sentenced to 37 years in prison for sexually exploiting nearly 100 girls

A man has been sentenced to 37 years in prison for the sexual exploitation of nearly 100 children, officials announced Wednesday.

Shaun Healy, 45, of Elburn, Illinois, pleaded guilty last year to child exploitation charges, according to the U.S. Attorney's office. U.S. District Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman imposed the sentence on Thursday, Feb. 12.

Prosecutors said in 2022, Healy used Snapchat to contact and persuade minor girls to create sexually explicit images and videos of themselves and send them to him, prosecutors said. Healy often pretended he was a young girl himself when he communicated with them so he could gain the victims' trust and persuade them to send him the explicit material, prosecutors said.

Healy also provided graphic, step-by-step instructions to his victims that explained the type of explicit conduct they should engage in, how to record it, and how to send it to him, prosecutors said.

Healy also threatened to publish the images and videos unless they sent more, prosecutors said.

Healy was arrested at his home in Elburn and searched his cellphone, prosecutors said. They found a password-protected album on the phone with dozens of carefully organized folders on children he had contacted through Snapchat, prosecutors said.

Each folder had the child's Snapchat username, image, and a catalog of all the sexually explicit images and videos he had told each child to send him, prosecutors said.

"Defendant is a child predator," Assistant U.S. Attorneys Saqib Mohammad Hussain and Elly Moheb said in prosecutors' sentencing memorandum, as quoted in a news release, "and not just a child predator, but one who ruthlessly sexually exploited young girls and prided himself on it.  What defendant made these children do will affect them for the rest of their lives in ways that we cannot appreciate."

The case was part of Project Safe Childhood, which brings together federal, state, and local resources to combat child sexual exploitation and abuse.