FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. – A U.S. Marine was extradited to South Florida Wednesday to face federal charges after agents said he coerced a 13-year-old Broward girl to send him numerous nude photos via Snapchat and encouraged her to harm herself.
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Federal court records show that Ryder-Lee Graham was initially arrested in Quantico, Virginia, where he’s assigned to the Marine Corps Embassy Security Group, in mid-November. A criminal complaint states that the 20-year-old is from Colorado.
According to the complaint, the investigation into Graham began when the girl’s parents found “sexually explicit material” on her Snapchat account and called Broward Sheriff’s Office deputies to their Lauderdale-by-the-Sea home on Aug. 25.
A Homeland Security Investigations agent said in the complaint that authorities found “several obscene pictures,” including a photo of a person’s wrists with cuts on it.
Authorities said the girl had been speaking with an account known as “GrymLee” since November 2023, when she was 12. They said “GrymLee,” later identified by investigators as Graham, initially claimed to be a 15-year-old boy from California but later said he was 19; she claimed to be 14.
Messages found on the girl’s phone revealed that Graham had “repeatedly asked (her) to produce and send him sexually explicit images and videos (of) herself,” the complaint states.
Authorities said the girl “threatened to commit suicide” if Graham didn’t stop the requests and in response, he “called (her) a whore and told her to do it.”
He also “encouraged (her) to cut herself” and threatened to share her explicit photos publicly and with her teachers if she refused to comply with his requests, agents said.
Authorities said they served a state search warrant on Graham’s Snapchat account and found more than 100 images of child sexual abuse material depicting the girl, including those in which she’s wearing distinct beaded bracelets Graham told her to make.
The complaint states that she later turned the bracelets over as evidence.
Graham, facing federal charges of production of child pornography and coercion and enticement of a minor, is scheduled to appear in Fort Lauderdale federal court on Friday.
Online records show he was being held in the BSO Main Jail on behalf of the U.S. Marshals Service as of Thursday.