A 31-year-old Queens man was sentenced to 30 months in federal prison Thursday for a year-long campaign of threats and extortion against a former girlfriend who had moved back to Maine, with a federal judge in Bangor also ordering him to pay more than $40,000 in restitution. Dabin Jeon threatened to rape the woman's mother, harm her grandparents, and blast explicit photos of her to her employer, friends, and family if she stopped sending him money.
A Relationship That Turned Into Extortion
Jeon pleaded guilty to cyberstalking on September 9, 2025, admitting he met the victim online in 2019 and began a relationship with her while both lived in New York, according to Fox Bangor. The victim provided him with financial assistance during their time together, but she stopped once she moved back to Maine and told him she could no longer afford to support him. Federal prosecutors said that is when Jeon's digital harassment and extortion campaign escalated, targeting the Maine victim for over a year, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
Jeon threatened to rape the victim's mother, to harm her grandparents, and to send explicit pictures of her to her employer, friends, and family, per the same account. The woman continued sending him money in response to the threats, and he demanded she account for her whereabouts and gave her tasks to complete.
Fake OnlyFans Account Unraveled the Scheme
In December 2022, the victim's friends and family began receiving text messages containing both clothed and unclothed pictures of her, sent by someone claiming to be the victim herself. That person offered roughly six other phone numbers meant to support a claim that the victim ran an OnlyFans account. Law enforcement agents traced most of those numbers back to accounts Jeon had opened, using service provider subpoenas and digital forensics to trace virtual phone numbers and fake social media accounts back to their registered owners, a process described generally by Study.com.
FBI Boston Special Agent in Charge Ted E. Docks said Jeon was strategic in his cyber torment of his victim and her family, and that his targeted bullying was intended to inflict emotional harm and fear of physical violence. Docks said the behavior could have escalated and that sending threatening communications is a crime the FBI takes seriously. The FBI's Boston Division, which investigated the case alongside law enforcement partners who traced the harassment back to Jeon, holds federal investigative jurisdiction across Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island, according to the Providence Journal.
Sentencing and Restitution in Bangor
U.S. District Judge Stacey D. Neumann handed down the 30-month sentence at the federal courthouse in Bangor, along with three years of supervised release to follow and a restitution order of $40,181.72 payable to the victim. Neumann was confirmed to the federal bench in Maine by a 50-43 Senate vote in July 2024, according to Wikipedia.
The mandatory restitution reflects federal law under 18 U.S.C. § 2264, which requires offenders convicted of stalking or cyberstalking to reimburse victims for financial losses, medical care, and mental health counseling, per Eisner Gorin LLP. The same statute, 18 U.S.C. § 2261A, carries a maximum penalty of five years in federal prison and fines up to $250,000 for cyberstalking convictions, meaning Jeon's sentence fell short of the ceiling but still carried a substantial financial penalty.
Prosecutors Warn Online Anonymity Is No Shield
U.S. Attorney Andrew Benson said online predators and stalkers believe the internet anonymizes their illegal and abusive behavior, but that this prosecution and sentence demonstrate online offenders will be held accountable, and that victims will receive a measure of justice through federal prosecution and sentencing. Benson was confirmed by the U.S. Senate to lead the District of Maine in May 2026 after serving as a Maine District Court judge from 2014 to 2025 and 15 years as a senior state homicide prosecutor.
Jeon lived in Oakland Gardens, a residential neighborhood in eastern Queens with a population of roughly 35,000 located about 400 miles from Bangor, according to Simplemaps. The case adds to a string of recent federal cyberstalking prosecutions nationwide — in August, a Chicago man received the statutory maximum 10-year sentence for sending violent death threats to an Iowa woman and her family, a case Hoodline reported, while a Utah woman received 12 months for harassing two men she met through online dating.
