A Plymouth man pleaded guilty in federal court in Boston to a brutal cyberstalking campaign against more than half a dozen women — and girls — between 2008 and his arrest last year.
“Enjoy Your Exposure You Naughty Bimbo. You Belong To The Internet,” is a sample of the kinds of messages James Florence Jr. wrote to his victims under one of his many fake accounts.
Florence, 37, of Plymouth, pleaded guilty to seven counts of cyberstalking and one count of child pornography. U.S. District Court Judge Richard G. Stearns scheduled sentencing for July 23.
The cyberstalking charges carry a maximum sentence of five years in prison and fines of up tp $250,000. Possession of child pornography could land Florence in prison for up to 20 years and will require him to register as a sex offender.
His harassment campaigns against the women and girls would prompt readers of his social media posts to “Post & Share Her Everywhere” and to “Make The (expletive) Famous,” according to court documents. His actions were “a chilling window into the dangers of online harassment and cyberstalking in the digital age,” then-U.S. Attorney Joshua Levy wrote following Florence’s September 2024 arrest.
Florence used the computer skills he honed in a tech career at software companies and even a U.S. government contractor to target women he knew personally. He would, prosecutors say, grab photos they posted online and then manipulate them through programs like Photoshop and artificial intelligence tools to appear as nudes or in pornographic poses.
He would then upload these altered images to social media “imposter” accounts and tag the women’ s real social media accounts to maximize the damage. In addition to the harassment the women would receive online following these posts, Florence would publish their real personal information including home addresses and places of employment so that others could target them and degrade them offline.
The fake accounts he would create would be highly sexual and talk about sexual preferences, stories about sex toys and equipment and invitations for men to contact her for sexual encounters.
But some ploys were more dynamic, as described in a U.S. Attorney’s office press release:
“For one of the victims, Florence used the name, image and other personal identifying information to program at least three AI-driven chatbots to interact with strangers across multiple platforms in sexually explicit conversations and disclose how to contact or find the victim,” according to the statement.
Florence would himself venture into the real world to target his victims, as police found in his Plymouth home dozens of pairs of women’s underwear and socks he had stolen from some of his victims.
That’s in addition to the 62 images and four videos of child pornography he had on his computer of female victims between 8 and 15 years old.