SKOWHEGAN — A Massachusetts man is facing several charges based on allegations reported to police in 2020 that he solicited sexually explicit images from a teenage girl from Skowhegan via social media while claiming to work for a modeling agency.
Authorities extradited John Scott Gray, 39, to Maine last week after he was arrested in Massachusetts earlier in May, court records show.
Gray, who has addresses in East Falmouth, Lowell and Chelmsford, Massachusetts, listed in court records, is charged with five Class B counts of sexual exploitation of a minor, as well as two Class D counts of possession of sexually explicit materials and one Class D count of stalking, according to court records.
Police allege that all of the offenses occurred between Nov. 1, 2019, and Jan. 7, 2020, in Skowhegan. The minor named in the exploitation and stalking charges was 14 years old at the time, court records show.
The Skowhegan Police Department began investigating Gray in early 2020, according to an affidavit filed by Detective Michael Bachelder. A district court judge issued an arrest warrant in October 2023.
Massachusetts court records indicate Gray was arrested as a fugitive from justice May 19. Court records do not say which law enforcement agency or where in the commonwealth Gray was arrested.
Gray appeared in Lowell District Court in Massachusetts the next day, records show.
Gray was then booked at the Somerset County Jail in Madison on May 28, jail records show. He was initially held on $15,000 cash bail, which was set at the time the warrant was issued in 2023.
At an initial court appearance in Skowhegan on Friday, District Court Judge Andrew Benson lowered the cash bail to $10,000, court records show. As of Monday, Gray was still being held at the Somerset County Jail.
Bail conditions Benson set prohibit Gray from having contact with the teenage girl involved in the allegations and any children under the age of 18, court records said. Gray is also prohibited from using and possessing devices capable of accessing the internet.
Gray has yet to enter pleas to the charges; he is not required to do so until and only if a grand jury returns an indictment. Gray is due back in court in Skowhegan on Aug. 11.
Benson appointed attorney John O’Donnell, who has a Waterville law firm, to represent Gray, court records show.
According to Bachelder’s affidavit filed in October 2023, the teenage girl reported to Skowhegan police in January 2020 that Gray and a woman named Stacy Love contacted her via the messaging platform Snapchat.
The Morning Sentinel does not identify alleged victims of sexual offenses without their consent.
In a later interview at a children’s advocacy center, the girl said she sent sexually explicit photographs of herself to Gray and Love, who claimed to be part of a modeling agency.
But when she said she refused to have sex with Gray and produce pornographic videos, the two threatened to post the images online, the affidavit said.
She first connected with Love on Snapchat, thinking she was about her age, and then Gray, who was described as Love’s boss, the affidavit said.
The girl said she first sent regular, fully clothed photos but eventually felt pressured to send nude photos, so the pair could put together a “portfolio,” the affidavit said.
The girl said during the interview she agreed to send the photos because she would make money and could help support her grandmother, the affidavit said.
She also told the interviewer Gray seemed like a real person, while Love “seemed really fake.”
Message history obtained from Snapchat through a search warrant documented some of the exchanges between Gray and the girl, as well as some of the photos she sent, the affidavit said.
What police did in the next three years is unclear in the affidavit.
Bachelder wrote that in October 2023, about a week before he requested the arrest warrant, he spoke with an agent with Homeland Security Investigations who had investigated another allegation involving Gray in Dexter in 2020.
HSI Special Agent Chase Ossinger shared with Bachelder a summary of his 2021 interview of Gray, the affidavit said. In that interview, Gray said he used another Snapchat account with a similar name as the one used in Skowhegan case to “promote ‘premium Snapchat girls’ which he clarified is ‘X-rated Snapchat.’”
Ossinger told Bachelder that federal prosecutors at the time were preparing to seek an indictment in his case, the affidavit says.
A records database search of federal district courts for Maine and Massachusetts showed no cases involving charges against Gray.
In the affidavit, Bachelder also wrote that early in his investigation, he found a news story from 2014, reporting Gray had been arrested on charges of enticing a child for sex and possessing and distributing child pornography. The news article reported that the allegation came from Halifax, Nova Scotia, and was related to law enforcement investigations in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Arizona, North Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania.
