Patrick Carey of Seaford gets 6 months in jail for posting 'deepfake' images of girls on pornographic website

A Seaford man was sentenced to 6 months in jail and 10 years probation for posting sexually explicit “deepfake” images of more than a dozen former classmates, along with their contact information, on a pornographic website and encouraged users to threaten the young women with violence.

Patrick Carey, 22, apologized to the women, some of whom were in the courtroom in Nassau County Court in Mineola, while reading from a written statement.

“I do not expect forgiveness; I'm just sorry,” said Carey, who added that he would “regret what I've done for the rest of my life.”

One of the victims, a young woman Newsday is not identifying because she is the victim of a crime, also addressed the court, and said she would never accept his apology. 

"You disgust me; You hurt me but you also changed me,” she said, adding that he had "sexualized" her. "Your name will forever give me nightmares and haunt me."

Acting Supreme Court Justice Robert Bogle, calling the defendant's conduct "cold and truly despicable behavior,” required Carey to register as a sex offender. The judge also issued stay away orders of protection for each of the 14 victims, barring Carey from having any contact with the women for eight years.

Nassau County District Attorney Anne Donnelly praised the women for coming forward to investigators.

“These women were not victims, today they are my heroes,” Donnelly said. “I commend them for their courage.”

Carey, the district attorney said, “acted with hate and he targeted these girls. He tried to make them fear for their safety and their future, but he underestimated their bravery, their resilience.”

Donnelly said the women came to investigators with a list of women who likely had been victimized when they learned their photos, which had been digitally superimposed on the bodies of other women engaged in sexual activity, had been posted.

“They went on a mission to identify the individual responsible and find the other women he victimized,” Donnelly said.

Donnelly lamented what she called a “significant loophole” in state law to address the use of “deepfake” pornography, which is currently not a criminal offense. Donnelly urged state lawmakers to pass a set of proposed statutes called the “Digital Manipulation Protection Act,” which would make it illegal to publish, disseminate or even depict individuals in a sexually explicit way “with the intent to cause harm to the reputation or emotional, financial or physical welfare of another person.”

“The depravity on display by this defendant truly makes my skin crawl,” Donnelly said.

Carey pleaded guilty last year to felony charges of promotion of a sexual performance of a child, second-degree aggravated harassment as a hate crime, second-degree stalking and the misdemeanor charge of endangering the welfare of a child. Prosecutors were able to press the top felony charge because separate from the “deepfake” photo victims, Carey had posted a real sexually explicit image of another woman, which was taken when she was underage, on the same pornographic website, Donnelly said.

Carey had attended MacArthur High School in Levittown with the victims, who said the photos were taken when the girls — now adults — were in high school and middle school, prosecutors said. Carey, a 2019 graduate, took the photos from the girls' social media accounts and some of their families’ accounts and then digitally altered them to suggest they had engaged in sexual conduct, prosecutors said. 

Carey’s Legal Aid Society attorney did not comment Tuesday. 

Nassau police were contacted by 11 women between January and September who said they had discovered images of themselves on a pornographic website, according to the indictment. The photos were accompanied by their full names, addresses and telephone numbers alongside the images.

Some of the victims told police they had been notified by social media companies that Carey had "screenshotted" images that later appeared on the website, prosecutors said. Carey used three different user names to post images of the victims from August 2019 until Sept. 5, 2021 — just hours before police arrested him, investigators said.

“These incredibly brave women pieced together this depraved conduct and brought it to the authorities,” Donnelly said. “They were not afraid and they were undeterred. Now, Carey will serve jail time and undergo rigorous monitoring for the next 10 years once he is released.”

By Nicole Fuller

nicole.fuller@newsday.com@NicoleFuller

Nicole Fuller is Newsday's senior criminal justice reporter. She began working at Newsday in 2012 and previously covered local government.