A 31-year-old Jeffersonville man was sentenced to 35 years in federal prison after prosecutors said he spent nearly a year grooming minors online, posing as a teenager while demanding explicit images and threatening to expose victims if they refused his demands. James Dean Collett Jr. pleaded guilty to two counts of sexual exploitation of a child and attempt, along with two counts of possession of child sexual abuse material.
According to the WHAS11 report on the sentencing, which was handed down on October 9, Collett communicated online with at least three minors in Pennsylvania, Idaho and Mississippi, according to court documents. Prosecutors said he groomed the minors into believing they were or could be in an online romantic relationship, and he lied about his identity, claiming to be a teenager despite being in his late twenties, per the Department of Justice's account of the case.
Court documents describe the conduct occurring from September 2023 through August 2024. During that span, Collett used social media apps and text messages to persuade victims to send more than 100 sexually explicit images and videos, and he threatened to share those images if the victims did not comply with his demands, the Department of Justice said. His demands at one point extended to involving the victims' younger relatives.
Search Warrant Led to Seized Phone, New Device
Police executed a search warrant at Collett's Jeffersonville home on February 8, 2024, and recovered an iPhone 8 containing child sexual abuse material, which the FBI then seized as evidence. Rather than stop, Collett obtained a new phone after investigators seized his original device and continued committing similar offenses until his arrest in August 2024, according to the case details reported by the station.
The case was prosecuted in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana, where the docket lists the matter as United States v. Collett, case number 4:24-cr-00022, according to pacermonitor.com. That same docket includes an indictment against Collett listing two counts.
U.S. Attorney Calls Conduct Depraved
Tom Wheeler, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Indiana, described Collett's conduct as calculated manipulation, threats, and relentless pursuit of vulnerable victims, calling it depraved and criminal. “Those who target and exploit children will face the full force of federal prosecution,” Wheeler said.
Along with the 35-year prison term, Collett was ordered to pay $59,000 in restitution and will serve a lifetime of supervised release once he is freed.
Cyber Tips Have Surged Statewide
The sentencing comes as Indiana officials report a dramatic rise in reports of online child exploitation. The Indiana Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force received 29,635 cyber tips in 2025 — a 38 percent increase over the prior year — and had already logged nearly 3,000 tips in early 2026, according to the Indiana Capital Chronicle. Indiana State Police arrested 499 people for crimes against children in 2025 and rescued 126 children from ongoing abuse, the outlet reported.
Indiana State Police Superintendent Anthony Scott has said predators are increasingly using tools like virtual private networks, or VPNs, and apps that limit data collection to evade investigators, according to the same report. Separately, the FBI's Jacksonville field office has noted that IC3 reports for the first seven months of 2025 in North Florida matched the total number of sextortion complaints recorded for all of 2024, a trend the bureau has pointed to as it urges families to watch for emerging online threats.
