A California man is being accused of using social-networking sites to lure teenagers into a modeling scam that reached at least one Shelby girl, officials say.
Police say that Joshua David Threlkeld of Orange County, Calif., used MySpace to prey on teenage girls before his arrest in May.
Threlkeld is alleged to have posed as a 14-year-old girl named "Sara Miller" and asked girls if they would like to pose with a guy named "Josh" for a modeling agency, officials say.
In April, police served a search warrant on his home and found cameras, computers and cell phones that were taken into evidence, according to the Riverside County Sheriff's Office.
"The pictures were found on his computer that he had sent the photographs to the victim in Shelby," said Capt. Bobby Steen of the Cleveland County Sheriff's Office.
Although officials took Threlkeld's computer into evidence, they fear that they may never know how many victims he is alleged to have reached.
Police believe that he had victims throughout the country, Canada and the United Kingdom. "You don't know if this is the only computer he had," Steen said. "You will probably never find out how many victims there were."
Once Threlkeld lured the teens, he would send adult pictures of how to pose for Model-508 Studios, Steen said. Model-508 Studios is the name of the modeling agency that Threlkeld used for the online scheme, he added.
Research has shown that predators often ask children to share explicit photos of themselves, the N.C. Attorney General's Office says.
"He (Threlkeld) sent or received 80 to 90 images in a three-month period," Steen said.
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