David A. Snell

David A. Snell, a 37-year-old man from Dayton, Ohio, was sentenced on March 18, 2026 to 270 months in federal prison for coercion and enticement after prosecutors said he used Reddit accounts to find and groom minors. According to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Ohio, Snell used multiple usernames and fake identities to connect with victims. According to court documents cited in the release, from May to July 2024 he used various Reddit accounts to identify and target vulnerable minors and to communicate with two minor girls. The Office said Snell groomed the two minors and coerced and enticed them to send him child sexual abuse material. The release does not name a subreddit or describe how Reddit was alerted. Snell was charged federally in August 2024 and pleaded guilty in September 2025. The sentence was imposed by Senior U.S. District Court Judge Thomas M. Rose and announced by U.S. Attorney Dominick S. Gerace II together with Jared Murphey, Acting Special Agent in Charge of Homeland Security Investigations Detroit. Assistant U.S. Attorney Christina E. Mahy represented the United States, and the case was brought under the Justice Department's Project Safe Childhood initiative. The Dayton-area Journal-News, reporting the sentence on the basis of the same release, added that Snell had been held in the Butler County Jail since August 2024. The newspaper also described the conduct as grooming girls through social media and messaging platforms and said the sentence amounted to 22 and a half years in prison. The release does not say which Reddit communities were involved, so the documented Reddit role is the use of several accounts as the means of finding and contacting the minors.