Posing as teen online, Wisconsin man got girls in 4 states to send hundreds of lurid photos, police say
A 44-year-old New Berlin man was charged Tuesday with posing as a Brookfield teenager online to get underage girls in at least four states to send him pornographic photos of themselves.
Craig D. Miller faces 18 felony counts, including causing mental harm to a child, sexual exploitation of a child, possession of child pornography, exposing his genitals to a child and identity theft causing harm.
According to a criminal complaint, Miller used photos of a New Jersey teenage male to construct his fake cyber identity as "Andy Harrington," a 19-year-old college student, and then preyed on vulnerable 14-, 15- and 16-year-old girls he met through apps like Kik and Instagram dating back to 2015.
The activity was first discovered when a 16-year-old Indiana girl tried to kill herself, after "friends" of "Harrington" — who were actually all Miller — told her Harrington had tried to kill himself over the girl. Police in Indiana told New Berlin police the girl may have been in contact with someone in New Berlin using the screen name "andysoccer1105." New Berlin police began their own investigation and served a search warrant at Miller's apartment in February.
There, investigators say, they found phones and computers with well-organized files on 17 people, including the 20-year-old New Jersey man whose nearly 700 photos police say Miller used as "Harrington." There were hundreds of images of child pornography, many of them selfies taken by the girls Miller was communicating with as Andy Harrington.
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Miller "would exert control and psychological pressure on these fragile girls to get them to comply with his requests" for pornographic photos and videos, the complaint states.
The complaint says Miller was cooperative and admitted to some of the conduct while seeming to minimize the scope of it. For instance, he admitted sending some photos of male genitalia to some girls but said they were not his own. But investigators found numerous selfies of Miller's own genitals on his phone.
Investigators say they found evidence of Miller communicating with other people in terms that suggest he well knew the age of the girls he was manipulating.
Other victims described in the complaint lived in Colorado, Kentucky and Wisconsin. The 15-year-old girl in Kentucky became terrified after learning that Harrington was really Miller, and would not leave her house. The girl's mother believed that Miller had been trying to contact her daughter even after police raided his home Feb. 13. Detectives believe Miller threatened to post the girl's photos in public if she told police about sending them to Miller.
The Wisconsin victim was from Fond du Lac.
Miller is being held at the Waukesha County Jail on $50,000 bail and is scheduled to make his initial court appearance Wednesday afternoon.