The Law Works. The First Federal Conviction Under the TAKE IT DOWN Act.

NCADA welcomes the first federal conviction under the TAKE IT DOWN Act as proof that the legal infrastructure survivors fought to build is now operational, and we urge the court to impose a sentence that reflects the severity of what James Strahler II did to his victims in Columbus, Ohio.

What He Did

Strahler, 37, pleaded guilty on April 7, 2026 to three federal charges: cyberstalking, producing obscene AI generated child sexual abuse material, and publication of digital forgeries — the TAKE IT DOWN Act's statutory term for deepfakes. Between December 2024 and June 2025, he installed 24 AI platforms and over 100 web based AI models on his phone and used them to generate sexually explicit images and videos of at least six women he knew personally, including former romantic partners, along with multiple children in his community.

He created a deepfake video depicting one victim in sex acts with her own father and then circulated it to her coworkers. He messaged the mothers of adult victims and demanded nude photographs of them, threatening to circulate deepfakes of their daughters if they refused. He used images of minor boys from his community, morphing their faces onto bodies of adults and other children to depict them in sex acts with their own mothers and grandmothers, and posted more than 700 of these images to a website dedicated to child sexual abuse material. Investigators found 2,400 images and videos on his phone.

We will not tolerate the abhorrent practice of posting and publicizing AI generated intimate images of real individuals without consent.

— U.S. Attorney Dominick S. Gerace II, Southern District of Ohio

Sentencing before Chief U.S. District Judge Sarah D. Morrison has not yet been scheduled, and the charges carry up to five years in federal prison.

What This Conviction Means

Forty days ago, we put a countdown on this website — forty days until platforms must comply with the TAKE IT DOWN Act's 48 hour takedown requirement — because we believed enforcement would define whether this law had teeth or was theater. By securing a guilty plea before the platform compliance deadline even arrived, the Department of Justice has answered that question decisively.

The TAKE IT DOWN Act became law because Francesca Mani, a 15 year old from Westfield, New Jersey, stood in front of Congress and told them what a classmate did to her with the Clothoff app, and because 59 girls in Lancaster, Pennsylvania were turned into pornography by two boys who received six months of probation, and because Senators Cruz and Klobuchar along with Representative Salazar translated that testimony into legislation. The Strahler conviction transforms their work from statute into precedent.

What Must Follow

The sentence must match the crime. Strahler targeted children, weaponized AI against women he knew personally, and distributed the material to their colleagues and families. By imposing a lenient sentence — the kind we saw in Lancaster — the court would undermine the deterrent effect of every future prosecution under this statute, which is why NCADA will be monitoring this sentencing closely.

Platform enforcement begins May 19. Every major platform must comply with the 48 hour takedown requirement or face FTC action, and our Platform Audit is tracking compliance in real time. The fact that the DOJ moved before the deadline should signal to every platform that the federal government's appetite for enforcement is real.

Four states still lack meaningful protections. The TAKE IT DOWN Act covers publication of deepfakes but does not address creation alone and does not provide civil remedies, which means federal enforcement cannot substitute for the state level action that remains absent in Alaska, Missouri, New Mexico, and West Virginia. Check your state.

— Annika Raj, Founder, National Coalition Against Deepfake Abuse