Tre Von Lamount Harris

Introduction

Tre Von Lamount Harris is a 21-year-old Austin, Texas man who ran a sextortion scheme against teenage boys while posing online as a teenage girl named “Michelle” — and who started doing it at sixteen. According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Texas, Harris used Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok, along with the payment app Cash App, to entice and extort minor male victims into producing sexually explicit images, then threatened to publish those images or send them to the victims’ families unless they paid him. A federal judge sentenced him to 292 months — more than 24 years — in federal prison for sexually exploiting numerous male minors.

Background Information

The scheme’s most remarkable feature is its timeline. Court documents state that Harris began his sexual exploitation scheme at the age of 16, meaning the conduct spanned his own mid-teens into adulthood. He was first caught in May 2022, when the Travis County Sheriff’s Office arrested him — then a high schooler — on two counts of sexual assault and one count of publishing or threatening to publish invasive visual recordings tied to the same kind of scheme, run that time under a different fictitious name, “Karla.” A Travis County judge released him on a $5,000 cash bond, removed a GPS monitoring condition that had originally been imposed, and allowed him to continue attending high school. He was therefore on state bond, and back in a school building, when the federal case against him began to form.

The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation

Convicted and sentenced. Tre Von Lamount Harris was sentenced to 292 months in federal prison for sexually exploiting numerous male minors through a years-long sextortion scheme.

Operating as “Michelle,” Harris used graphic and explicit language to tell his victims — teenage boys — exactly what kinds of images he wanted them to produce. The victims self-produced child sexual abuse material and sent it to Harris through their social media accounts. He then sent extortionate threats: pay him, or he would post the images online or send them to the victims’ family and friends. The U.S. Attorney’s announcement states that Harris did, in fact, follow through on those threats, converting the harassment into a revenue stream run through Cash App.

The federal case began with tips. Beginning in December 2022, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children received several CyberTip reports from social media providers and private citizens regarding the CSAM activity tied to one or more of Harris’s online usernames. The FBI learned of those complaints in May 2023 and conducted an extensive investigation that included interviews with multiple victims. On May 21, 2024, Harris was arrested on federal charges — at his high school. The arrest location underscores the posture he occupied after the 2022 state case: a prosecuted sex offender, released on bond with his monitoring stripped down, re-offending against a new group of victims under a new alias.

Public Reaction and Consequences

U.S. Attorney Justin R. Simmons of the Western District of Texas framed the sentence around both the conduct and its repetition: “Tre Von Harris will spend more than a decade of his young adult life behind bars because he hid behind a fake profile to humiliate and sexually exploit teenage boys for profit, continuing to do so even after he was caught the first time.” He added that American children “are active all across social media” and “do not always know who is on the other end,” and credited the case to parents who stayed involved in their children’s online lives. FBI San Antonio Special Agent in Charge Daniel Faith said the sentence “reflects the seriousness of the suffering and harm inflicted on these victims,” and warned that offenders who believe they can “hide behind a screen and prey on children without consequences” will be pursued.

Current Status

Harris is a sentenced federal defendant serving a 292-month term for sexually exploiting numerous male minors. The FBI investigated the case, and Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Devlin prosecuted it. The sentence was announced by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Texas as part of Project Safe Childhood, the Department of Justice initiative to combat child sexual exploitation and abuse. The announcement does not describe the disposition of the underlying 2022 Travis County state charges, nor any appeal from the federal sentence.

Impact on Their Career/Life

Harris is 21 and will spend roughly a quarter-century in federal custody, with the sentence stretching past his mid-forties. The public record of his short life is now dominated by two aliases, “Michelle” and “Karla,” two prosecutions, and a victim pool of teenage boys across multiple platforms. The case has also become the office’s standing example of sextortion: a scheme that begins with a fake profile, monetizes shame through extortion threats, and ends — as Simmons put it — with the offender spending his young adult life behind bars. For the victims and their families, the sentence came with the FBI’s stated hope of “a measure of closure.”

Sources

• U.S. Attorney’s Office, Western District of Texas, “21-Year-Old Texas Man Sentenced to Over 24 Years in Federal Prison for Sexually Exploiting Juvenile Boys,” November 2026. source