A youth basketball coach who ran a sports program out of a Brooklyn Catholic school paid teenage boys in the program to perform in pornographic videos, then sold those videos on the internet, federal prosecutors allege.
Michael Jafferakos, 26, used the basketball program, which was not named in court proceedings, to groom victims starting in middle school, then get them to record videos that he shared with an accomplice via Telegram, prosecutors said. And, in one instance, his accomplice specifically directed Jafferakos to get a video from a boy featured on the basketball program’s Instagram account, prosecutors allege.
“This case is a teen parent’s worst nightmare,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Kaitlin Farrell said at Jafferakos’ Brooklyn Federal Court arraignment Thursday.
Investigators learned about Jafferakos when the mother of a 14-year-old boy in Wisconsin discovered the basketball coach had paid the teen last year to produce videos of himself masturbating, Farrell said.
The mom called 911, and the yearlong investigation led the feds to get a search warrant for Jafferakos’ Dyker Heights home, where he lives with his parents and adult siblings, the feds said. His parents watched, ashen-faced and silent, during the court proceeding.
That teen said he met Jafferakos on Snapchat, and the coach told him he lived in New York City and offered to fly him out to New York.
Investigators got the warrant this week and executed it Thursday morning, finding multiple electronic devices with child sexual abuse material on them, much of it featuring children who participate in the basketball program, where Jeffarakos works as a commissioner, Farrell said.
“A preliminary search of some of those devices revealed the presence of hundreds of images and videos containing child sexual abuse material on at least one of those devices (Jafferakos’s iPhone), many of which Jafferakos shared to a Telegram group with several other Telegram users, a criminal complaint alleges.
Investigators are still digging into more than nine devices recovered from the basketball coach’s home, according to the feds.
So far, investigators have identified two victims from the program so far, including one 14-year-old that Jafferakos and his accomplice paid with an electric bicycle, Farrell said.
Jefferakos also filmed himself giving that same boy a massage in the basement of the church that hosts the basketball program on Monday, three days before his arrest, according to the complaint. The boy was wearing nothing but boxers throughout the 16-minute video.
Jefferakos admitted to his crimes, and admitted he paid victims on behalf of his Telegram accomplice, the feds allege.
Farrell argued that Jeffarakos was too great a danger to the community to be released on any bail amount: “This case is unique in the sense that it presents both hands-on abuse of local children and (of) children on the internet,” Farrell said.
Jefferakos’ lawyer, Samuel Jacobson, argued that the coach could he held on bond on house arrest, with strict restrictions on internet use in his home. “He’s not going to the basketball league. It’s just not going to happen,” Jacobson told Magistrate Judge Seth Eichenholtz.
But Eichenholz sided with the prosecution, saying, “I do not do this easily or readily, but I’m going to order detention for this defendant.”