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A man at the centre of one of the world’s largest catfishing child abuse investigations admits the manslaughter of a 12-year-old girl.
Alexander McCartney, 25, Newry, County Down, has pleaded guilty to 185 charges involving more than 60 victims.
The case involved using a fake identity to commit the online abuse, exploitation and blackmail of children.
The manslaughter victim, who was not from the UK, killed herself in 2018.
She cannot be named for legal reasons.
Some reporting restrictions related to the case were lifted at Belfast Crown Court on Monday.
The charges cover a period from 2013 to 2019 with victims being identified in both New Zealand and the USA.
Previous court hearings were told this investigation began in 2018 following a report made to police in Scotland.
Investigations led police to identify McCartney.
His home was searched with a computer and mobile phone were taken away.
When the devices were examined, police discovered thousands of images of young girls in “various states of dress and undress, performing various sexual acts”.
‘Complex sentencing exercise’
During an unsuccessful bail application earlier in the case, a prosecution lawyer said McCartney had befriended the Scottish girl on the social media site Snapchat.
She sent him a naked picture, with the defendant then blackmailing her saying he would upload the image to the internet if she did not do what he asked.
This was a different victim to the child who took her own life.
McCartney, from the rural Lissummon Road area just a few miles outside Newry, first appeared in the city’s magistrates’ court in late July 2019.
He has since been on remand at Maghaberry Prison.
As well as the manslaughter charge he has pleaded guilty to 59 counts of blackmail.
There are also dozens of charges relating to making and distributing indecent photographs and a total of seventy charges of inciting children to engage in sexual activity.
Putting the case back until May for sentencing, Mr Justice O’Hara said he wanted “a comprehensive list of all the offences compiled person-by-person”.
“That’ll show the timescale and the number of girls to who it happened,” he said.
“This is going to be a very complex sentencing exercise.”