Plea expected sex extortion case

A former University of the Cumberlands student plans to plead guilty to federal charges that he tried to coax a fellow female student into making a sexually explicit video for him, along with accusations of identity theft and illegally accessing the school’s computers.

An attorney for 23-year-old Sungkook Kim filed a motion in U.S. District Court in London last Friday asking that his client be re-arraigned on all but one of 25 charges a grand jury indicted him for last December. Kim was indicted on 15 counts of extortion, eight counts of unauthorized computer access, and identity theft to go along with the child porn accusations – all of it part of a scheme he allegedly devised to try to coerce a fellow student into making a sexually explicit movie for him.

Kim, a South Korean citizen who was born in Thailand, has been expelled from the University of the Cumberlands since the allegations against him first surfaced. He is currently awaiting trial in federal custody.

Investigators became interested in Kim after a fellow female student reported to police that she was the victim of an attempted extortion scheme via email sent from a Yahoo! account. The person, believed to be Kim, claimed to have sexually explicit video footage of her and threatened to distribute it to her friends and professors if she did not make another similar video of herself. In all, 21 emails were sent with the threats. Williamsburg Police, along with the help of the Kentucky Attorney General’s cyber crime unit, allegedly tracked the messages to Kim’s personal home computer, and a couple other computers on the University of the Cumberland’s campus. Authorities say Kim was questioned and admitted to sending the emails.

According to FBI Special Agent Donnie Kidd, who filed the affidavit in federal court that led to the recent charges, Kim allowed police to have his computer equipment, including a one terabyte external hard drive. During a search of the hard drive, investigators stumbled upon two pornographic videos. One, a 28-minute-long clip, allegedly portrays several adult males engaging in sexual intercourse with girls between the ages of three and seven-years-old. The other shows a girl from 10-13 years old in a shower.
Authorities say both videos were known to investigators and were produced in Cambodia by a Florida man who traveled to the country to make them. He was arrested in 2006 and convicted in connection with the videos.

Investigators claim Kim gained access to 97 separate accounts at the University by installing “key logger” software on computers at the school that would email back to him keystrokes made at the machines. Administrative as well as student accounts were compromised.

Kim was scheduled to stand trial on the charges March 9, but U.S. District Judge Gregory F. Van Tatenhove approved a defense motion to put it off until April 13. His attorney, Paul Croley of Williamsburg, said in court filings that Kim intends to go to trial over the final charge in the indictment – possession of child pornography – an offense that carries a more severe penalty than the other charges.